The Book and the Watch
by Bad Pun King
Summary: Ever wonder how different Gravity Falls would've been if Ben and Gwen Tennyson had been sent to spend the summer there alongside Dipper and Mabel Pines? This is that story! More details in the intro
1. Tourist Trapped

**Welp! This is my first time writing in a few years. And my first time posting anything I have written.**

 **Fair warning for anyone who came here expecting drastic changes or an original story mixing these concepts, this will mostly still follow the same plot Gravity Falls canonically has, maybe with a few original chapters for Ben 10 plotpoints sometime down the road. Why? Because I'm trying to get back into writing as much I did before and starting with something simple, inserting a character or characters from fandom 1 into fandom 2's storyline, to help get my head back in the game seems like a good way to do it.**

 **There also won't be any shipping done that didn't happen in the show. Make any arguments you want, I can't write shipping.**

 **Don't be afraid to take a few days to read a single chapter. Since I'm essentially taking the original episodes and adding onto them, these will be rather long chapters. This one alone is 11,000 words without this intro or the outro.**

 **Now for some reason I've seen literally every fic on here do this next thing. I dunno if it's like a rule or something when it should be obvious but meh. I'll do it. I do not own, nor did I have any hand in creating Ben 10 or Gravity Falls, which were both created by their respective creators and owned by their respective owners.**

 **And without further ado, anyone still interested: enjoy**

* * *

"Ah, summer break." a young voice begins to narrate as the hot summer sun shines down on a family having a nice grill out.

"So do you want cheese on that hun?" the father asks his loving wife, flipping a burger patty on his sizzling grill.

"Sure, Clyde." The mother answers, eating another burger at a picnic table with several of their friends. Two of their children run around in circles, laughing at the fun they're having.

"A time for leisure, recreation, and taking 'er easy…" The narrator continues.

"Unless you're us." A second, slightly younger narrator continues.

A golfcart with two children, a boy in an orange shirt, dark blue vest, and with brown hair who is driving the golfcart, and a girl with much longer brown hair, a purple sweater decorated with white stars, braces, and yellow star shaped earrings riding with him, screaming at the top of their lungs fly through a billboard and swerve onto a forest trail, then drive off a small cliff! Behind them, a loud buzzing noise can be heard, and several trees are being knocked over by some grunting creature!

"It's getting closer!" the girl exclaims, looking back at the beast behind them!

A looming shadow of the thing crawls over them as it catches up, but a second shadow can be seen flying around the larger. The main monster tries to grab the golfcart but misses as they briefly speed up and drive over a small boulder, making them spin in the air before landing safely. A gross spewing noise, akin to squeezing ketchup out o a bottle improperly can be heard.

"My name is Dipper." The narrator who is also the boy explains, "The girl about to puke is my sister Mabel." The girl, 'Mabel', can be seen holding her hand over her mouth with puffed out cheeks looking panicked and nauseas at the same time. "You may be wondering what we're doing in a golfcart fleeing from a creature of unimaginable horror while some other creature is trying to help us."

The larger monster pulls a tree out of the ground, takes a swipe at the fly like entity spewing a substance onto it, and then throws it ahead of the golfcart! "Look out!" Mabel shouts, pointing to the tree as it lands directly in front of them! The golfcart swerves as Dipper tries to avoid the tree but is ultimately unable too!

"Rest assured, there is a perfectly logical explanation." Dipper continues as a narrator, "Let's rewind."

"It all began when our parents decided we could use some fresh air. They shipped us up north to a sleepy town called Gravity Falls, Oregon, along with Ben and Gwen, the grandchildren of one of our elderly neighbors. We were sent to stay at our great uncle's place in the woods."

"This attic is amazing." Mabel comments, hanging a poster of a boy on the wall next to her bed, "Check out all my splinters!" she continues, holding up her hands to show off a number of large splinters all lodged within her palms and fingers.

"Doesn't that hurt?" asks a girl a little further down the room, one with short orange hair, a blue shirt with a silhouette of a cat's head on it, and green eyes asks.

"Nope!" Mabel smiles happily.

Dipper walks into the room wearing his backpack and turns when he hears a 'baaa' noise, before frowning. "And there's a goat on my bed." He deadpans.

"You sure that's not the Queen of Coodies?" a snarky brown haired boy, also with green eyes, a white shirt with a black stripe going down it, and forest green baggy pants asks, smiling to himself as he leans on his pack on the wall playing a handheld game.

"Very funny, Ben." the girl orange haired girl scoffs at her cousin, folding her arms and glaring.

"I know." the boy, Ben, arrogantly smiles, proud of himself.

"Gwen," the boy, Ben, narrates, "is my doofus cousin. She likes books and does well in school, and doesn't really care what happens as long as it doesn't interfere with her _oh so precious schedule_."

"Why did I have to get stuck on this trip with you instead of my summer plan?" Gwen looks up at the ceiling in frustration.

"I on the other hand was down for whatever." Ben goes on as narrator, "As long as I could find ways to have fun, not do school, and stay away from her, I was fine."

Ignoring Ben and Gwen, Mabel walks up to the goat with her arms held out for a hug, "Hey there, friend!" The goat chomps down on her shooting star emblemed pink sweater and nibbles on it. "Ooh! Yes you can keep chewing on my sweater." The laughs to herself at the situation.

"My sister, Mabel, tends to look on the bright side of things." Dipper continues the narration.

Mabel rolls down a grass covered hill for the fun of it, saying "Yeeeeeeeeees!" the entire way down, while Ben waits at the top for her to get out of the way so he could do it.

Dipper and Gwen sit at the base of a tree at the base of the hill trying to read, Dipper with a pen in his mouth and Gwen with one behind her ear. "But I was having a hard time getting used to our new surroundings." Dipper continues to narrate as a woodpecker pecks at his hat, distracting both him and Gwen.

"Boo!" a man in a lake monster mask jumps out of the bushes and screams at them, making the two children fall over and yelp in shock! The man pulls off the mask to reveal himself as an elderly man with a large orange nose, big ears, glasses, shave marks, grey eyebrows, a tuxedo, and a red fez with a golden symbol on it, laughing at them heartily.

"And then there was our great uncle Stan:" Dipper keeps on narrating, as he and Gwen glare daggers at the man while he slaps his knee, "That guy."

'Stan' laughs even harder at them after slapping his knee, to the point where he has a coughing fit and has to beat his chest to regain proper breathing. "It was worth it." He states, coughing a bit more.

"Stan turned his house into a tourist trap he called the Mystery Shack." Ben takes over narrating for a bit, "The real mystery was how he fooled anyone."

Stan is showing a group of tourist through the Mystery Shack as one of a fake jackelope's antlers falls off. "Ladies and gentlemen behold," he strategically directs their attention away from the jackelope to a more impressive and absurd attraction, "The sascrotch!" A humanoid ape statue wearing underwear stands next to the sign that reads 'sascrotch', both under a makeshift spotlight that's really a desk lamb tied to a support beam. The gullible crowd claps and takes pictures as they aww at the beast.

"And guess who had to work there." Ben and Dipper narrate together. Under a no refunds sign, Dipper is sweeping, Gwen is holding a dusk pan for him, Mabel is admiring an eyeball exhibit, and Ben is leaning on the wall playing his handheld game.

Dipper sighs from exhaustion while Mabel reaches out to touch the attraction before her hand is slapped away by a cane with an 8ball on the end of it. "No touching the merchandise!" Stan yells at her. Pointing his cane at Ben he continues, "And you! Get back to work!"

"It looked like it was going to be the same boring routine all summer…" Dipper narrates once again.

"…Until one fateful day." Ben finishes for him.

Mabel pops her head up between several 'Mr. Mystery' bobble heads of Stan, excitedly chanting, "He's looking at it! He's looking at it!" to herself.

A young boy picks up a folded letter and reads, "Do you like me?" with several hearts drawn around it. Underneath are check boxes saying 'Yes', 'Definitely', and 'Absolutely!'. He looks around in concern.

"I rigged it!" she whisper-yells to herself in glee!

"Mabel," Dipper starts, cleaning a jar of fake eyeballs, "I know you're going through your whole boy crazy phase but I think you're kinda overdoing it on the crazy part."

"What?!" Mabel cries out in surprise, before sticking her tongue out and blowing on it in a crazy way, "Come oooon Dipper! This is our first summer away from home! It's my big chance to have an epic summer romance!"

"Mabel, you flirt with every guy you meet." Gwen deadpans, carrying a sack of garbage out back to the trash, "Like when you told that guy to call you the girl of his dreams and pushed him into the card rack."

"Or that time you told that guy you liked turtles because he was holding a turtle." Ben adds as he mops the floor past them.

"Or when you told that Mattress Prince to take you with him to his kingdom of savings." Dipper finishes, finishes, holding his arms up to further express his point.

"Talk all you want," Mabel deflects by wagging her finger at Dipper, "but I have a good feeling about this summer." she smugly points back to a doorway behind them and confidentially states, "I wouldn't be surprised if the man of my dreams walked through that door right now."

On cue, Stan walks through the doorway holding a pit cola and some signs, burping and holding his stomach. "Ah…" he grumbles, "Ah, uh, not good, ow."

"Aw! Ugh! Why?!" Mabel cringes in disgust while Dipper and Ben laugh at her, and Gwen laughs at her from the doorway after disposing of the trash bag.

"Alright, alright, look alive people!" Stan gets to attention of all his employees, legal or no, "I need a couple of you to go hammer up these signs in the spooky part of the forest."

"Not it!" Dipper, Ben, Mabel, and Gwen all yell at once, holding up their fingers.

"Uh, also not it!" the fat handy man in a green shirt with a question mark on it and wearing a grayish brown cap, screwing a shelf into the wall lifts his hand a little later.

"Nobody asked you, Soos." Stan deadpans.

"I know." Soos admits, "And I'm comfortable with that." He takes a bite out of a chocolate bar.

"Wendy!" Stan calls to the darker orange haired teenage girl wearing a lumberjack hat, green T-shirt, blue jeans, and muddy boats reading a magazine at the cash register, "I need you to put up these signs!"

"I would but I…" Wendy makes a grabbing motion in Stan general direction and grunts, clearly slacking, "can't…reach it."

"I'd fire all of you if I could." Stan states in annoyance.

Turning back the children, Stan sighs and starts, "All right, let's make it: eeny meenie miney – you. And you." He points at Dipper, then to Ben.

"Aw, what?" Ben questions in disbelief and annoyance.

Dipper tries to stand up to Stan, "Grunkle Stan, whenever I'm in those woods I feel like I'm being watched."

"Uh, this again." Stan pinches his nose between his eyes in aggravation.

"I'm telling you, something weird is going on in this town." Dipper looks Stan right in the eye and points at him, "Just today my mosquito bite spelled out 'BEWARE'!" he lifts his sleeve to show it off.

Stan leans in to take a closer look and blankly states, "That says 'BEWARB'." Dipper scratches at it in embarrassment.

"Look kid, the whole 'monsters in the forest' thing is just local legend drummed up by guys like me to sell merch to guys like that." He gestures to a customer mesmerized by one of the Mr. Mystery bobble heads.

"Yeah." Gwen stands next to Stan, rather authoritive despite being only ten years old, "Stop being paranoid, take my doofus cousin, and get out of here."

"What she said." Stan deadpans, tossing Dipper three signs and Ben three other signs. They both sigh in defeat.

Later, after the Shack had closed for the night, Dipper and Ben hang all those signs they had been given. "Grunkle Stan…nobody ever believes anything I say." Dipper vents to himself, sighing as he nails a sign into a tree.

"That's because you keep talking about monsters and magic and stuff." Ben blandly says to him from another nearby tree, "As awesome as all that sounds, no one will ever believe any of it. You sound like my friend Zack back home."

"You don't have to rub it in." Dipper sighs, looking down, "I'm gonna go hang signs over here. Why don't you go hang some over there?"

"Sounds good to me." Ben shrugs, "I could use a walk anyway." He takes his last couple signs and walks to the other side of a hill a little ways away.

Dipper sighs at the fact no one, not even Mabel would believe him, and goes to hang a nail on another tree…But when he tries to hammer the nail in, instead of going into the wood, it creates a metal clanking sound, "Huh?" he yelps in surprise, looking at the hammer and then back at the tree with concern. He leans his head against the tree as he experimentally hammers it a few more times to confirm his suspicions. He feels around the 'bark' of the tree until he finds a part where he can lift something, opening a small dusty panel in the process. Inside he finds some kind of radio-like device with two switches on top of it. He looks around to make sure no one is watching before flipping each switch a couple times.

After around ten minutes or so of fooling around with the thing, a panel in the ground opens behind him, scaring the goat away. "What the..?" he whispers to himself, walking over to the panel and peering inside. Within the compartment he finds a dirty, leather bound journal, covered in cobwebs and insects. He pulls it out and blows on it to reveal a golden six fingered hand on the cover with a three on the palm of it.

He takes it to a nearby felled tree and opens it, once again making sure no one is around to see him. Inside is an old watch and a ripped paper reading 'property of' with the author's name ripped out. It says volume 3 on the next page.

"It's hard to believe it's been six years since I began studying the strange and wondrous secrets of Gravity Falls, Oregon." Dipper reads aloud to himself. He turns the page to find documents on floating eyeballs and giant vampire bats, then turns it again to find two pages on gnomes, and again to find a page of cursed doors! "What is all this?" he asks himself, looking through several more pages worth of myths and monsters. "Unfortunately my suspicions have been confirmed" he reads on, "I'm being watched. I must hide this book before he finds it. Remember, in Gravity Falls there is no one you can trust." He closes the book and repeats the words aloud, "No one you can trust…"

"Hello!" Mabel screeches, jumping up from behind the tree Dipper had been sitting against, scaring the living daylights out of him! "Wha'cha reading? Some nerd thing?"

Panicking, he hides the book behind his back, "Uh! Uh! It's nothing!"

Mabel waves her arms around and makes a face as she mocks her brother, "'Uh! Uh! It's nothing!'" she laughs, "Are you actually not gonna show me?"

"Uhhhh…" Dipper stares like a deer in the headlights as the goat starts trying to eat the journal, "Let's go somewhere private."

"There!" Ben admires his handy work having hung his last sign…crookedly. "Now for some me time!" he holds his hands behind his head as he begins to just aimlessly walk through the forest, enjoying his time away from responsibility or anyone who would berate him for not being responsible.

After a few minutes of whistling the Sumo Slammers theme to himself he notices a bright light in the sky moving at high speeds. "Whoa! A shooting star!" he assumes, looking on in awe. Almost immediately it changes course and heads directly for him. He tries to turn and run but it lands right where he had been standing almost absurdly fast, knocking him over! It leaves behind a large trench which it lays in the center of.

Ben walks up to see what it is, going all the way to the edge of the crater. "Looks like a satellite or something." He comments to no one in particular.

The ground under him caves in and he falls into the whole, though unharmed. He stands up next to the thing to see it better. Something that looks akin to a metal armadillo rolled up into a ball. It opens to reveal a green hourglass shaped light. Ben leans in to see what it might be. "A watch?" he confusedly asks, "What's a watch doing in outer space?" Its green glow brightens to reveal the sort of clamp a wrist watch would have, gray in color, and that the hourglass is the face of the watch. Ben reaches down to take it as a souvenir, smiling to himself, when suddenly it jumps up on its own and clamps onto his left wrist! "Ah! Get off me! Get off! Get off!" he yells in some fusion of fear, surprise, and shock as he flails his arm around while the device dings, even falling over when he tries to pull it off with his other hand! He gets out of the crater and runs back in the direction he left Dipper hoping maybe him and his nerd knowledge could help.

Having not found Dipper where they parted ways, he takes a stick and tries to pry to watch off of him, only for the end of it to split. He grunts in frustration and falls to his knees, glaring at the thing. He grabs the dial of it to see if it has a button to get it off and the face pops up as a result. "Whoa." He yelps. Now curious, he looks around and watches as the hourglass on the face becomes a diamond shape with a silhouette of a muscular humanoid with four arms. "Cool!" he comments, getting his finger onto the dial and slowly pushing it down.

A flash of green envelops him! The muscles on his left arm start to bulge and expand out of proportion to the rest of him, even burying the watch within them! This effect crawls up his arm and over his eye! The next thing he knows he's twelve feet tall, incredibly buff, has extremely broad shoulders, and his skin is red! He feels a slight pain as a second pair of arms burst out of his armpits, almost as large as his now inhumanly strong original arms! He feels his head change, his hair disappearing and an extra set of eyes growing under the originals! He doesn't even have a nose anymore! The light fades and he finds himself on his hands and knees.

He looks on his four fingered hands, and the black fingerless gloves on them. He still has his white shirt with a black line going down the center, and now he has black pants that go all the way down to the two large red toes he has on each foot. His yellow eyes look over his new body, seeing a fully gray version of the hourglass symbol on his left shoulder. He screams in horror and shock with his new, gravelly voice! "What happened to me?!"

"Snot for brains?!" Gwen calls out into the woods. Ben turns his head to where her voice came from, "Mr. Pines said no one can sleep until you and Dipper come home! So get your butt back to the Shack!"

"Gwen!" Ben calls out, standing up and running toward her voice, "I'm over here!" After running to where he thought he had heard her voice he stops and looks around in disappointed confusion. "Gwen! Where are you?!" he turns around in confusion, having lost all sense of direction or spatial awareness.

He was about to call out again when suddenly a bush behind him rustles, and Gwen jumps out of it trying to jump kick Ben in the back of the knee, then rolls back a little ways and entering a judo stance. "I dunno who or what you are, Four Arms, or how you know me, but I will hurt you."

"Oh come on, freak. I already told you." He glares at the redhead and folds all four of his arms.

That's when Gwen's eyes dawn with realization, "Ben? Is that really you?" she walks closer to him in shock, "What happened?"

"Well," Ben begins, "after I got done putting up all the signs I went for a walk. Then this meteor fell from the sky and almost mudged me! Except that it wasn't a meteor or a satellite but this cool watch thing that jumped up onto my wrist! And when I tried to get it off I was suddenly huge!"

"Oh man. Maybe Mr. Pines knows something about this." Gwen suggest, shrugging in a 'I have no idea what to do' way.

"I dunno but even if he doesn't I might be stuck like this forever so it's worth a try." Ben shrugs in compliance. "Which way is the Shack again?"

"Why can't you tell me out here in the woods?" Mabel wines, "C'mon! Lemmie see!" She reaches to take the journal only for Dipper to jerk it out of the way.

"Because literally anybody could be watching! I would rather we know they aren't!" Dipper firmly scolds, holding the book above and behind his head.

"Booooooo!" Mabel mockingly boos her brother, holding two thumbs down up at him, "What could be so private you can't tell me when we're alone in nature?"

That is when they hear a rumbling noise as the ground shakes ever so slightly, yet rhythmically. "Hey! Dipper! Mabel!" Gwen calls, running up to them waving her arm in the air.

"What's going on, sister?" Mabel asks.

"We have a situation with Ben." Gwen points to the woods where she came from, where Ben in his large monster form comes out from trees.

Dipper's pupils shrink to around a fifth their normal size and Mabel's jaw drops, "What happened?" they both ask, Dipper more scared and shocked, Mabel more excited and awed.

"It's a long story." Ben scratches the back of his head, closing his eyes and smiling awkwardly. Then he holds up his finger and says, "But check this out!" before ripping a tree out of the ground then holding it in only his upper two hands, flexing the biceps on his lower arms, "I'm awesome!"

"Whooooooaaaa!" Mabel giggles in enthusiasm, "How far can you throw it?!"

"Let's find out!" Ben readjusts his grip on the tree and holds it like a spear, then throws it as far as he can, where it does out of sight.

Meanwhile in the city junkyard, a crazy looking hillbilly man is carrying around a couple gadgets and parts when suddenly a tree comes crashing down on a scrapped car next to him, making him yelp and throw up all his parts as he runs away screaming "They found me!"

During all this, Dipper took out the journal and has been frantically flipping through the pages trying to find what Ben became. He looks back up in unease as he watches Mabel sitting on Ben's shoulder while Gwen tries to convince them to stop messing around. "Come on, there must be something in this thing about whatever he is." is all Dipper can say as he loses all trust in whatever form his friend had taken.

As Ben and Gwen have another of their famous arguments, a strange, alien beeping noise begins to sound. Mabel notices the symbol on Ben's shoulder flashing red and watches as the red blinks in tune with the beeping. Ben and Gwen watch the thing too, and Dipper from a further distance where he is hiding behind a small boulder coming out of the ground. The final beep extends and Ben is swallowed in a blinding red light as his previous transformation is undone, Gwen falling to the ground with and 'oof', no more giant shoulder to sit on.

"Hey! I'm me again!" Ben shouts in happiness! "I wonder if I could turn into that whenever I want."

"I hope so! Imagine all the cool stuff you could do!" Mabel beams, sitting up and borderline with stars in her eyes as she imagines four armed Ben and her having neat adventures.

"Or y'know, maybe not mess with the thing we don't know anything about?" Dipper nervously suggests, twiddling his thumbs, "Who knows maybe the government will try to dissect you or something?"

"You have a good point." Gwen points out, "We don't know what it is what it might do."

"Only one way to find out!" Ben shouts, starting to twist the dial on the watch again, only for it to fail, making him visibly annoyed.

"Well…" Dipper looks down at the journal in his arms, "There might be another way but I can't tell you until we're back at the Shack."

"What? That nerd thing you wouldn't show me?" Mabel asks, eyebrow raised

Back at the Shack in the living room, Dipper walks around, Journal in hand as he gets ready to explain. Mabel sits on the arm of Stan's chair, Ben sits in the chair itself, and Gwen stands next to the chair. Dipper turns to the others and begins with a question, "You all know how Grunkle Stan said I was being paranoid?"

Ben raises his hand and answers, "Pretty sure that was all of us, dude."

Dipper and Gwen both give Ben a look but ignore him as Dipper continues, "According to this book I found hidden in the woods," he opens the journal to a random page and points to the contents, "Gravity Falls has this secret dark side."

"Whoa! Shut up!" Mabel awes, pushing Dipper playfully.

"Normally I'd say you're reading too much into it but after what happened to Ben…" Gwen adds, looking at her cousin.

"Yes, I was getting to that." Dipper continues, "I haven't found it yet, but I'm sure if we search through this book long enough we'll figure out whatever it is Ben turned into." He flips through a couple pages until they all turn blank, "I just hope the author got to it before whatever happened happened."

"They just go blank after a certain point?" Gwen asks in bemusement, folding her arms and shifting her weight.

"Pretty much." Dipper shrugs, closing the book and holding it under his arm.

That's when the doorbell rings and everyone looks over toward the door. "Who could that be?" Gwen asks.

"Well, time to spill the beans!" Mabel smiles, leaning over and knocking over an empty bean can on the shelf next to her with a 'boop', "Beans!" she smiles smugly at her own joke.

Then she points to herself with her thumbs and exclaims, "This girl's got a date! Woo Woo" she raises her arms in a raise the roof motion, then flails her arms around a bit laughing.

"Lemmie get this straight," Dipper pinches between his eyes, "In the half hour we were gone you already found a boyfriend?"

"What can I say?" Mabel shrugs, "I guess I'm just _irresistible_!" she lets her sweater's sleeves go over her hands while she flails her arms some more.

The doorbell rings again, twice this time. "Oh!" Mabel remembers that he's at the door and jumps off the chair yelling, "Coming!"

"I don't trust the guy personally." Gwen rolls her eyes, speaking aloud to Dipper and Ben, "But I couldn't talk her out of it."

Dipper opens the journal again and tries to find the four armed thing. That's when Grunkle Stan comes walking by and asks, "Wha'cha reading there, Slick?"

"Oh!" Dipper panics, closes the book, drops it, and shoves it behind the dinosaur skull shaped desk next to the chair, "I was just catching up on eh…" he grabs a book from on top of the desk, and opens it as if he's reading it, then goes to look at the cover to see what he picked up, "Gold Chains for Old Men Magazine?"

"That's a good issue." Stan states, looking over Dipper's shoulder.

"Hey faaaaaaamilyyyyyy…and friends!" Mabel shouts, grabbing the attention of all four people in the room, "Say hello to my new boyfriend!" she raises her arms in excitement and celebration.

Next to her is a teenager in a black hoodie with a tear on his left shoulder, blue jeans, and what appears to be a branch sticking through the hood. He turns around to reveal his pale face, hair covering one of his eyes, and a red liquid on his cheek. His expression relaxes as he raises his hand to wave, "Sup?" Everyone else looks on with disturbed expressions, except Gwen.

"Hey…" Dipper raises his hand awkwardly.

"Hi…" Ben does much the same thing from his seat in the chair.

"How's it hanging?" Stan makes a finger gun at the guest.

"Hello…" Gwen folds her arms and gives an expression more along the lines of 'him again'.

"We met at the cemetery." Mabel explains, holding the guy's arm, "He's reeeaaally deep!" she squeezes his arm and gasps, "Little muscle there…heh…" she looks away awkwardly, "what a surprise…"

"So what's your name again?" Gwen asks in a sarcastic tone, "I didn't catch it before."

"Uhhh…" he seems to panic in a growly voice, looking around wildly as if he's searching for words, "Normal…Man!"

"He means Norman!" Mabel assumes, leaning closer to him.

"Are you bleeding, Norman?" Dipper inquires, pointing to the red liquid on his face.

That's when Norman himself seems to notice the substance and looks around seemingly panic stricken again, "It's jam!"

Mabel gasps and slaps Norman's chest saying, "I love jam!" then makes a comparing motion with her hands and continues, "Look-at-this!"

Norman looks down at the child half his size and asks her, "So you wanna go hold hands or whatever?"

"Oh! Oh my goodness!" Mabel blushes and holds a hand up to her mouth to hide her giggle. Then she looks back to the room and exclaims, "Don't wait up!" before running off out the door

Norman gives the room a finger gun, seems to lose his balance and slam into the doorframe, then uses that momentum to aim himself to go out the door…or that's how it seems until another crash is heard.

"There was something about Norman that wasn't right." Dipper once again picks up narrating, "I decided to keep an eye out for it while Ben and I searched through the journal for that other form he took."

"Four Arms." Ben as the 2nd narrator adds, "I named him Four Arms."

"Whatever." Narrator Dipper gives a sigh as if rolling his eyes.

In another part of the attic, one flooded with red light from a stain glass window depicting a triangle with an eye in the center, Dipper and Ben search through the journal for 'Four Arms', also keeping an eye out for anything that might be related to Norman.

Dipper reads aloud with Ben next to him on the windowsill as they search, "Known for their pale skin and bad attitudes, these creatures are often mistaken for…Teenagers!" he exclaims in surprise and now concern!

"What?!" Ben had been relaxing with his arms propped behind his head but now he jumps up to sit next to Dipper, noticing an illustration of a monster that greatly resembles Norman under the words 'The Undead'.

Dipper reads on with urgency, "Beware Gravity Fall's nefarious…" they gasp in unison and can see the illustration as if it were Norman saying 'sup?'

"Zombie!" they both scream at the same time at the top of their respective lungs.

Stan happened to hear them as he was fixing his bowtie in the mirror downstairs. "Somebody say…crombie?" he tries to decipher what he heard, "What is that? Crombie? That's not even a word. You're losing your mind." His eyes widen as he looks himself in the mirror.

Back upstairs both children watch out the window in horror as Norman approaches Mabel menacingly while she sits there on the picnic table oblivious to the danger. "I like you." She states, staring up at him as he approaches.

"Oh no!" Dipper exclaims in helplessness, "Mabeeel!"

"Not good!" Ben starts reaching for the watch without looking at what he was doing.

"No no, Mabel watch out!" Dipper screams in terror!

"C'mon! Work!" Ben tries to transform again but the watch remains in its same red state from earlier and refuses to work.

Norman brings both his hands down on Mabel's shoulders as the boys gasp, but then he releases Mabel to reveal he was just putting a ring of flowers around her shoulders. "Daisies? You scallywag!" she giggles to herself at what she sees as Norman being adorable.

"Is my sister really dating a zombie? Or am I just going nuts?" Dipper asks himself, putting a hand on his forehead and jumping onto the floor, followed shortly by Ben.

"If she is, I'll save her!" Ben offers, holding his left fist forward, "As soon as I get this stupid watch to work." He deflates a bit.

"I appreciate the offer but there must be something we can do that won't hurt him, especially if he doesn't turn out to be a zombie." Dipper places a hand on his chin and looks at the floor in thought.

"It's a dilemma to be sure." The handyman, 'Soos', joins the conversation as he screws in the room's lightbulb, startling both Dipper and Ben who both somehow missed him! He looks down at the duo and continues, "I couldn't help but overhear you two talking to eachother in this empty room."

"Soos, you've seen Mabel's boyfriend." Dipper approaches, trying to appeal to the manbaby, "He's gotta be a zombie right?"

"Hmmm…" Soos gives it some thought, "How many brains did ya see the guy eat?"

"Zero…" Dipper looks down with disappointed expression in response, Ben responding by huffing and folding his arms.

"Look dudes, I believe you." Soos affirms, "I'm always noticing weird stuff in this town. Like the mailman? Pretty sure that dude's a werewolf." He has a flashback of a roundish, abnormally hairy mailman, "But'cha gotta have evidence." He points out, pointing at them with his screwdriver, "Otherwise people are gonna think you're a major league coo-coo-clock."

"As always, Soos, you're right." Dipper nods his head in agreement.

"My wisdom is both a blessing, and a curse." Soos stares dramatically at nothing.

"Soos!" Stan calls from outside, "The portable toilets are clogged again!"

Soos readjusts his hat, stating, "I am needed elsewhere." and walking backwards out of the room.

Dipper closes the book and he and Ben look at eachother, silent agreement to prove their suspicions.

"My sister could be in trouble." Dipper narrates.

Ben takes his place in the next segment, "It was time to get some evidence."

Dipper and Ben both follow Mabel and Norman around town, each using their own video camera to try to catch footage from different angles.

They watch as the lovers try to play Frisbee only for Norman to get hit in the head by the disk and fall over. Then Norman punches through a window in a local dinner to open the door for Mabel and stumbles through behind her. They finish the day when Norman and Mabel are frolicking through a graveyard and Norman falls into a new grave, then mimics a zombie dragging itself above ground, only for them to laugh as Dipper and Ben look at eachother.

"We'd seen enough." Dipper narrates once again.

Later back at the Shack, Dipper and Ben burst in on Mabel in their shared attic room while she brushes her own hair. Gwen ignores all of them, simply reading a book on her bed. "Mabel, we've gotta talk about Norman!" Dipper initiates.

"Isn't he the best?" Mabel responds in innocent glee, "Check out this giant smooch mark he gave me!" she turns her head to reveal a giant red mark on her right cheek.

Dipper jumps with a short 'aaa' while Ben recoils with a 'whoa'!

"Ha ha! Gullible." Mabel rolls her eyes at the boys, "It was just an accident with the leaf blower."

Mabel has a flashback to when she was having 'kissing practice' putting a picture of Norman on the end of a leaf blower set to inhale when it sucks in her lips, making her panic and run around yelling "Turn it off!" while banging the machine on the ground.

"That was fun." She states, smiling at the memory.

"No, Mabel, we're trying to tell you that Norman is not what he seems!" Dipper urges, revealing the Journal tucked away in his vest.

Gwen rolls her eyes, having put down her book in favor of watching Dipper's 'paranoia' and Ben's 'ignorance', "Here we go…"

Mabel gasps and in hushed voice asks, "You think he might be a vampire?" raising her voice to normal she continues, "That would be so awesome!"

"Guess again sister!" Ben tries to hype up the truth, pointing up at the ceiling for no particular reason.

Dipper does the dramatic reveal, yelling, "Sha-bam!" as he opens the book to the wrong page.

Mabel recoils in disgust while Gwen sarcastically asks, "A gnome? Seriously?"

Ben glares daggers at his cousin while Dipper flips to the right page, "Wait, hold on, I'm sorry…sha-bam!" he shows her the zombie page.

"A zombie? That is not funny Dipper." Mabel scolds their hypothesis.

"Wouldn't he smell bad if he were a rotting zombie?" Gwen adds, "And like, I don't know, be rotting?"

"Like you would understand." Ben rolls his eyes at what he thinks to be Gwen being 'stuck up' and 'high and mighty'.

"No, seriously." Dipper continues, putting away the Journal and pacing as he lists stuff off, "It all adds up! The bleeding, the limp…He never blinks!" he turns around with a bit of a shout on that last part, "Have you noticed that?"

"Maybe he's blinking when you're blinking." Mabel suggests.

"I've never seen him blink either!" Ben interjects.

"As if you'd notice." Gwen scoffs, "You're attention span isn't long enough to notice something like that."

"Shut up, dweeb!" Ben retaliates against Gwen.

"Guys! Remember what the Book said about Gravity Falls?" Dipper stresses, looking over his shoulder to make sure Stan, Soos, or Wendy isn't there, "Trust no one!"

"Well what about me, huh?" Mabel brings up, "Why can't you trust _me_?" she immediately puts on star shaped earrings while making 'beep bop' noises.

"Mabel! He's gonna eat your brain!" Dipper stresses, shaking Mabel's shoulders, making both Ben and Gwen pause their petty squabble at the unusual hostility between the twins.

"Dipper, listen to me." Mabel gets serious, a rare and unsettling sight, as she grabs Dipper's arm and shrugging it off her, "Norman and I are going on a date at five o'clock and I'm gonna be adorable! And he's gonna be dreamy! And I'm not gonna let you or Ben ruin it with one of your crazy conspiracies!" she punctuates each sentence by pushing Dipper, which in turn pushes Ben who's behind him, and slamming the door in their faces despite their pleas!

"Harsh." Gwen comments, giving Mabel a concerned look.

"I'm fed up with them! That's all!" Mabel shouts in frustration, folding her arms and pouting. The two stay in silence for awhile afterward.

Outside, Dipper sighs and falls down the door to sit, "What are we gonna do?" he asks in shock and desperation.

"More spying?" Ben suggests, kneeling beside him and putting his arm on Dipper's shoulder comfortingly.

"I don't know man…Let's go see if we got any footage that can convince her." Dipper sighs.

Later, Norman rings the doorbell to pick up his girlfriend. "Coming!" she yells, putting on a purple sweater decorated with stars and cat face much like Gwen's with the phrase 'meow wow!' around it. "Hey Norman!" she answers as she opens the door, "How do I look?" she shows off her sweater.

Norman takes a look at the sweater and just answers, "Shiny." in a sort of dead way.

Mabel laughs and replies, "You always know what to say!" they hold hands as they leave.

Dipper and Ben watch from where they sit together in Stan's chair rewatching their footage from before. "Soos is right." Dipper says in defeat, "We don't have any real evidence."

Dipper was about to continue when Ben interrupts him, "Wait a second! Look!" Ben points to a recording of Norman he got on his camera of Norman's hand randomly falling off and him reattaching it without anyone else noticing.

"What!" Dipper exclaims, "Play that again!"

Ben does so and Dipper flips out, literally, flipping the chair over as he flails! "We were right!" he exclaims, grabbing Ben and rushing out the door, "Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Grunkle Stan!"

Ben follows closely, Dipper letting go as soon as they get behind a crowd of tourists Stan is scamming. "And here we have Rock That Looks Like a Face Rock." Stan shows off his homemade attraction, "The rock that looks like a face!"

"Does it look like a rock?" one of the tourists raises his hand and asks.

"No, it looks like a face." Stan deadpans.

"Is it a face?" another tourist asks.

"It's a rock that **looks** like a face!" Stan barks, beginning to lose patience with the idiots of the crowd.

Dipper and Ben both try to grab Stan's attention from the back of the crowd, Dipper shouting 'Grunkle Stan!' and Ben just shouting 'Stan!'

"For the 5th time, it's not an **actual** face!" Stan is shouting into a crowd that is made of idiots and trolls asking him stupid questions, and therefore not noticing Dipper or Ben.

Dipper gets scared they're taking too long and panics!

"Finally, we're alone." Mabel states as she and Norman stop in the middle of the woods.

"Yes…" Norman agrees, staring down at Mabel ominously from behind, "…alone."

That's when Dipper notices Wendy pulling up to the Shack with the golfcart, exclaiming "Wendy!" as he realizes that'll be much quicker! Ben notices Dipper running off and follows him close behind. Coming up behind Wendy Dipper frantically explains himself, "Wendy! I need to borrow the golfcart so I can save my sister from a zombie!"

Wendy, assuming Dipper and Ben were just gonna go for a joy ride in the cart, drops the keys into Dipper's open hands, only saying "Try not to hit any pedestrians." as she walks off to lounge somewhere.

Dipper and Ben nod to each other as they climb into the cart, Dipper taking the wheel and backing the cart out of the Shack's dirt parking lot until the handyman stops them. "Dudes, it's me. Soos." He hands Ben ad shovel saying, "This is for the zombies."

"Thanks man." Ben takes the shovel and lays it on his lap.

Then Soos hands Ben a baseball bat, adding, "And this is in case you see a piñata."

They both give him weird looks, Dipper thanking him this time as they drive off to save Mabel. "Better safe than sorry!" Soos waves to them as they leave.

"Mabel…" Norman begins, turning around and fiddling with his zipper, "Now that we've gotten to know each other there's…" he takes a breath, "There's something I should tell you."

"Oh Norman, you can tell me anything!" Mabel dramatically encourages him while reciting, "Please be a vampire, please be a vampire," in her head excitedly.

"Alright just… Just don't freak out ok?" Norman turns around and tensely grabs his zipper, "Just keep an open mind. Be cool." He opens his jacket to reveal not a zombie or a vampire but five gnomes stacked on eachother, two in boots acting as legs, two holding sticks with fake hands on them. "Is this weird? Is this too weird? You need to sit down?" the top gnome who was the head of Norman asks in worry. Mabel just stares back mouth agape, shocked beyond belief. "Right, I'll explain." The gnome continues. "So…we're gnomes, first off, get that one out of the way." Mabel's eye twitches, "I'm Jeff, and here we have Carson, Steve, Jason, and…" He names off the other gnomes until he gets to the last one, "I'm sorry I always forget your name?"

"Schmebulock." The final gnome, who looks quite a bit more unhinged than the others, answers.

Jeff snaps his fingers, "Schmebulock! Yes!" Mabel sits down on a rock and facepalms in disappointment, "Anyways, long story short: Us gnomes have been looking for a new queen! Right guys?"

All the other gnomes repeat the word 'queen', almost ferally. "Heh. So whaddaya say?" he steps on Steve's head, signaling Schmebulock to get on his hands and knees so 'Norman' kneels down while Carson holds up his arm which is holding a box that opens to reveal a wedding ring, "Will you join us in holy matri-gnome-y?" he takes a moment to correct himself, "Matrimony! Bla! Can't talk today."

Mabel winches as she realizes what she has to do, "Look, I'm sorry guys. You're really sweet but I'm a girl and you're gnomes and it's like 'What?' Yikes…"

"We understand." Jeff responds sadly, as he and the other four look down, "We'll never forget you Mabel…" she smiles at the sentiment until he finishes his sentence, "…because we're gonna kidnap you."

"Huh?" Mabel takes just a moment too long to interpret what he was talking about before Jeff pounces on her.

"Don't worry Mabel! We'll save you from that zombie!" Dipper yells as he drives the golfcart recklessly to get to his sister.

Ben's space watch turns green with another beep but in the adrenaline rush neither he nor Dipper notice.

"Help!" Mabel calls from deep in the woods, alerting the boys to her location.

"Hold on Mabel!" Ben yells back, "We're coming!"

Dipper and Ben pull up just as Jeff is trying to explain to Mabel, "The more you struggle the more awkward this is gonna be for everybody-" he facepalms, "Ok, just get her arm there, Steve."

"Let go of me!" Mabel defies her captures, punching the gnome biting onto her sleeve until he lets go, then kicking another one who vomits a rainbow in response.

"What the heck is going on here?!" Dipper asks, holding the shovel while Ben just stares in bewilderment holding the bat.

"What's with the midgets?" Ben asks in complete and udder confusion.

A gnome runs by them and hisses, making Dipper flinch putting Ben in a fighting stance ready to retaliate.

"Dipper! Ben!" Mabel grabs their attention, "Norman turned out to be a bunch of gnomes! And they're total jerks!" the punches one of the gnomes over the head as several gather around her, that one retaliating by pulling her hair.

"Gnomes?" Ben scowls, lowering his bat in disappointment, "I thought we were gonna fight something cool."

Dipper silently takes the Journal out of his vest to reread the page on gnomes, "Gnomes: Little men of the Gravity Falls forest. Weaknesses: Unknown." He reads aloud, lowering the book as Ben looks back and forth between him and Mabel, who is now tied to the ground, unsure of what exactly to do.

"Aw, c'mon!" Mabel fumes at hearing the lack of weakness.

"Hey hey!" Dipper yells, approaching Jeff from behind, "Let go of my sister!"

"Whoa! Hey there!" Jeff turns around and nervously tries to explain, "Ya know, this is all really just a big misunderstanding! You see your sister's not in danger. She's just marrying all one thousand of us and becoming our gnome queen for all eternity. Isn't that right, honey?" he turns to Mabel.

"You guys are butt-faces!" Mabel answers, only for another gnome to cover her mouth so she can't talk.

"Give her back or else." Ben threatens, hitting the palm of his hand with the bat.

"You think you boys can stop us? You have no idea what we're capable of." Jeff threatens, "The gnomes are a powerful race! Do not trifle with the-" He was going to keep going until Dipper slide his shovel under him and threw him to the side, then used the side of it to cut the ropes binding Mabel, allowing her to simultaneously leap up and kick away the other four gnomes!

She and Dipper climb into the golfcart with Ben jumping onto hold onto the back.

"They're getting away with our queen!" Jeff yells, "No no no!"

"Smell ya later, shorties!" Ben insults as the golfcart pulls away, waving his bat in the air mockingly.

"You've messed with the wrong creatures!" Jeff exclaims in anger, "Gnomes of the forest: Assemble!" Gnomes pop out of every nook and cranny in the area to all join together into one giant mega gnome in order to assure victory.

"Hurry before they come after us!" Mabel urges, despite being much too far away to know of the mega gnome.

"You're joking right?" Ben asks with a raised eyebrow, "With those legs? They couldn't catch Stan!"

That's when they hear a rumble and Dipper stops the golfcart. The mega gnome approaches and all three kids look back in awe. "Dang…" Mabel comments.

"Ok, maybe this bat won't be enough." Ben adds, looking at the bat. That's when he notices the watch has changed color.

"Teamwork guys! Like we practiced!" Jeff barks orders from above. The mega gnome roars and slams its fist onto the ground, causing several gnomes to come off.

Fortunately Dipper had the mindfulness to drive away before the fist could hit, meaning the mega gnome had to wait for the other gnomes to reassemble before it pursued, though this only bought a few seconds. "Come back with our queen!"

"I don't think so!" Ben definitely exclaims. Since he can't very well let go of the cart without falling onto the road he sticks his arm in between the Twins, "One of you push the button!"

Mabel frantically fiddles with the watch as the mega gnome throws a few gnomes toward the cart! One lands on the roof and tries to climb in the side only to get kicked off by Mabel! Schmebulock jumps onto Ben's shoulder and tries to attack Dipper, only to get his face slammed into the horn a few times and get tossed off. "Hurry!"

"I'm trying!" Mabel panics, trying to figure out how exactly the device works! A third gnome jumps down from the roof onto the hood, then jumps onto Dipper's face, latching onto and attacking it! This makes Mabel jolt, which in turn causes her to jolt the watch and push down the face!

Ben is enveloped in the green light once again but something different happens this time. His left arm spasms a little as it turns a sickly green color with what appears to be an insect-like exoskeleton while the hand turns black and looses two fingers, also gaining a sort of claws as it too is covered in the hard carapace. As his arm finishes transforming his muscles in it significantly relax. As he feels the same black shell creep up his face he closes his eyes and finds a bit of pain in the sides of his head as tentacle-like eyestalks burst forth and he can see despite his normal eyes being closed! His legs fuse together with his feet becoming a large sort of stinger and suddenly insectoid wings and four insect legs with two knees each and no feet all burst out of his body, said body being clothed in a white body suit with black stripes connecting each pair of limbs! He finds that face of the watch now adorns his face just above his mouth!

The gnome hisses and winces at the bright light of the transformation and this allows Mabel to punch it off her brother's face, said gnome taking Dipper's hat with him! "Thanks Mabel…" Dipper dizzily vocalizes his gratitude.

"Don't mention it." She strangely calmly responds.

Ben in his new fly form finds he isn't safely on the tailgate of the golfcart anymore, his second pair of legs and tail dragging on the ground behind them! "Whoa!" he squeals as he falls off and tumbles like a weed while the mega gnome passes over him, apparently rubbing where its eyes would be from the brightness of the light. "Hey! Garden Boy! I'm back here!" Ben calls, giving his new wings a test run by flapping them as hard and fast as he can, making him burst upward and forward, just behind the mega gnome!

Jeff is hyper focused on the cart until he notices a putrid stench invading his nostrils! The rest of the gnomes start to notice as well, "Oh man, what is that unearthly smell?" he asks, turning around, when he sees Ben! "What in the world is that?!"

"You're worst nightmare, short stuff!" Ben answers! He feels something in his eyestalks, something similar to the feeling of spit building up in one's mouth, and for a brief moment he becomes blind until a mucus like substance rockets out of his eyes into the gnomes, blasting a few of them off the mega gnome and trapping them on the ground! "That's handy!" Ben comments to himself.

"Hey! This isn't any of your business!" Jeff objects, directing the mega gnome to uproot a tree and swing it around like a fly swatter, "Stay out of it!"

Ben stays silent, focusing more on dodging and spewing out the mucus whenever he can! However, it isn't long until he gets caught in the tree's branches!

Seeing no sign of the man sized bug anymore, it hurls the tree ahead of the twins to block their escape! Ben looks down at the Pines as they stare back up at him! The tree crashes, dislodging Ben just as the twins are swerving under it, forcing them to spin out until eventually the golfcart falls on its side in the Mystery Shack's parking lot! Dipper crawls out the back while Mabel tries to crawl over the side, Ben trying to stand but puking up some of the mucus from his mouth instead of his stalks. The mega gnome approaches as they recover.

Dipper grabs the shovel, shouting, "Stay back man!"and throwing it like a spear only for it to get punches out of the air!

Ben flies in front of the kids to guard them, "These two are under my protection!"

"And what are you gonna do?" Jeff taunts, "Spit on us? That was inconvenient but it isn't enough to stop us!"

"Where's Grunkle Stan?!" Dipper asks in a panic, unsure how a mega gnome made of smaller gnomes and a man sized bug can go unnoticed.

"Behold! The world's most distracting object!" Stan shows off a hypnotism ring to some customers, completely missing the battle right outside. "Just try to look away! Ya can't! ...I can't even remember what I was talking about…"

"It's the end of the line!" Jeff asserts from atop his throne of gnome, "Mabel, marry us before we do something crazy!"

"You guys get out of here! I'll hold him off!" Ben commands, creating a small dust cloud as he flies above the mega gnome, raining down a hail of mucus onto it!

"I don't think so!" Jeff yells, pushing a gnome hat like a lever, blocking the gunk with one mega arm using the other to swipe the pesky fly! The swipe causes turbulence which throws Ben off balance, making him spin around uncontrollably until the mega gnome takes a second swipe, grabbing him! "Mabel! If you don't marry us, we'll squash this thing like the bug it is!" Jeff threatens, the mega gnome squeezing Ben like a grape!

Mabel and Dipper are literally backed into a wall, no place left to run! "There's gotta be a way out of this!" Dipper panics, looking around frantically, then trying to pull the Journal out of his vest pocket.

Mabel then gets a determined look on her face and walks forward. "I gotta do it." She states, almost blankly.

"What?!" Dipper realizes what his sister just said, "Mabel! Don't do this! Are you crazy?!"

"Trust me." Mabel assures, giving him a stern look.

"What?" Dipper responds with confusion.

"Dipper, just this once, _trust me_!" she turns to him and further emphasis her point.

Dipper looks back up to Jeff and then Ben and slowly backs away in defeat. "Alright Jeff…I'll marry you." Mabel relents.

"Hot dog!" Jeff exclaims with glee, the mega gnome stomping the ground in joy, "Help me down there fellas!" After getting out of the mega gnome Jeff holds up the same ring from before, pointing to it while making 'Ayyy? Ayyyyy?' noises. Mabel lets him put the ring on her finger then admires it for awhile. "Ba-da-bing-ba-da-bam!" Jeff celebrates, "Now let's get you back into the forest, honey!"

He was about to go back to pilot the mega gnome when Mabel stops him in his tracks with her words, "You may now kiss the bride."

"Well," Jeff holds himself up as proudly as one can when one is only a foot or two tall, "Don't mind if I do!" He leans toward her with his lips puckered up and Mabel leans in too.

Just when Jeff closes his eyes, Mabel leans back and flips a switch on the leaf blower she did kissing practice on before, the head of which is aimed at Jeff's face, "Ah!" he recoils when he sees the machine, "Hey hey, wait a minute! What's going on?!" he doesn't understand until he sucked into the face of the leaf blower, much to the surprise of Dipper, Ben, and the other gnomes!

"That's for lying to me!" Mabel angrily shouts into Jeff's panic stricken face! She turns up the power of the blower all the way, making Jeff's face cave into the nozzle a bit more! "That's for breaking my heart!"

"Ow! My face!" Jeff cries out despite his mouth being within the nozzle.

"And this is for messing with my brother!" Mabel continues, forgetting Ben in the heat of the moment! The mega gnome takes a step back in fear as it sees the blower aimed at it.

"Wanna do the honors?" Mabel asks Dipper as they both hold the blower trained at the mega gnome's chest.

"On three." Dipper agrees.

They count down and on one they set the blower to blow full power instead of suck full power! This launches Jeff like a missile into the mega gnome, making it break about into every actual gnome and freeing Ben who falls to the ground with an oof.

"I'll get you back for thiiiiiis!" Jeff threatens as he is launched deep into the forest from over the skyline!

"Who's giving orders? I need orders!" one of the random gnomes frantically asks around! Another complains "My arms are tired…"

Mabel comes along with the leaf blower to shoo them all away while Ben scares the gnomes by towering over and silently threatening to eat them! "Anyone else want some?" Dipper triumphantly asks as all the gnomes scatter, running in fear! One gets his arms and legs caught in a six pack ring thing and being carried off by the same goat from throughout the events that've taken place.

Dipper, Mabel, and Ben in his insect form watch in triumph as they scatter. At least, they were doing that until Mabel sighs, "I uh, I'm sorry for ignoring your advice guys." She apologizes, looking down at her feet, "You really were just looking out for me."

"Oh don't be like that," Dipper waves it off, "You saved our butts back there!"

"Yeah!" Ben agrees, leaning down to them, "If not for you I'd been flattened like a pancake!"

"I guess I'm just sad that my first boyfriend turned out to be a bunch of gnomes." Mabel continues, taking one of the various leaves in her hair and throwing it to the wind.

"Look on the bright side." Dipper shrugs, "Maybe the next one will be a vampire."

"Oh, you're just saying that!" Mabel laughs, punching her bro in the shoulder.

"Awkward sibling hug?" Dipper offers, holding out his arms.

"Awkward sibling hug." Mabel accepts, going to hug Dipper.

Both their faces go blank as they say, "Pat pat" while patting each other's backs.

"While I'm still this, who wants a ride?" Ben asks, leaning down enough for his breath to enter their noses.

"No way man!" Dipper laughs, "You smell worse than a dead skunk! I would like to see if we can find either of your forms or that watch in the Journal though."

"Sounds good to me!" Ben agrees.

They spend the next five minutes around the back of the Shack where the three of them discuss Ben's watch and transformations while searching through the Journal in search of them. They even end up naming Ben's new form 'Stinkfly'!

Then when Ben transforms back into himself all three of them go back into the Shack through the gift shop Stan greets them. "Yeesh, you three get hit by a bus or something? Aha!" He comments on Dipper and Mabel's messiness and Ben's lingering smell. The three ignore him, opting to go to their shared attic room instead out of exhaustion. "Hey!" Stan calls to them just before they can leave, grabbing their attention just in time, "Wouldn't you know it, I accidentally overstocked some inventory," Stan lies out of kindness, "So hows about each of you take one item from the giftshop on the house, ya know?"

"Really?" Mabel asks hopefully, as all three turn to face him.

"What's the catch?" Dipper monotonously asks, folding his arms in disbelief.

"The catch is do it before I change my mind now take something." Stan deadpans, gathering the days profits he finished counting as they came in and putting them in the register.

"I'll go get Gwen so she can pick something too!" Mabel exclaims, not really wanting any of them to be left out even if Gwen wasn't there for the gnome incident.

After Mabel and Gwen return all four go rummaging through the gift shop for something they might enjoy. Dipper takes a blue and white cap with a pine tree emblem on the front then looks at himself in the gift shop mirror while wearing it, "Hmm…That otta do the trick!" Dipper says as he adjusts it to fit comfortably on his head.

"Oh! I like this!" Gwen comments as she takes a black cat mask from a rack of masks that are supposedly imbued with luck.

"Now we're talking!" Ben pumps his arms as he takes soda as opposed to anything he might be able to keep or use at any point throughout the summer.

Mabel spots what she desires most in the store while looking in a crate. "And I will have a…" she picks up her prize and holds it in the air, "Grappling hook! Yes!"

Everyone else in the room just stares at her in bewilderment until Stan speaks up, "Wouldn't you rather have, like, a doll or something?"

Mabel grapples to the ceiling, knocking over a large box in the process, and then gives her answer as she hangs there: "Grappling hook!"

"Fair enough!" Stan smiles, not really caring enough to do anything about it.

"Why do you even have a grappling hook?" Gwen asks, looking over to Stan for some sensible explanation.

"To be honest I didn't know I had one." Stan shrugs, finishing putting the money in the register.

Later that night Ben is playing on his handheld in his bed, Gwen is reading another of her novels in hers, Mabel is jumping on her's, and Dipper is adding details about the gnomes to the Journal.

"This Journal told me there was no one in Gravity Falls I could trust." Dipper narrates as he had before, while the Dipper that was writing in the bed looks around at Mabel and Ben fondly, "But when you battle a hundred gnomes side by side with someone? You realize that they've probably always got your back." Mabel uses the grappling hook to snag a plush tiger she threw onto the rafters in the ceiling while Ben celebrates a new high score he got in his game.

"Hey Mabel, could you get the light?" the Dipper in the scene asks. Mabel responds by aiming her grappling hook at it.

"Mabel, no!" Gwen warns, looking sternly at her from across the room.

"Mabel yes!" Mabel screeches, firing and sending the lantern though the window, breaking both. "It worked!"

"Mabel!" Gwen scolds. Dipper, Mabel, and Ben all laugh at Gwen's fury and Mabel's absurdity.

"Our uncle told us there was nothing strange about this town." Dipper narrator continues as Stan walks through the gift shop holding another lantern on his way to the vending machine. "But who knows what other secrets are waiting to be unlocked?" Stan types a code into the vending machine and it opens like a door, revealing a hidden corridor. Stan enters the room and looks around to make sure no one is watching as he closes it behind him.

"Whatever those secrets are, between the knowledge of the Journal, the power of the Watch, and bond we all share? I think we can overcome anything." Ben finishes the narration as the scene shifts to a spaceship of some sort floating in orbit around the Earth alongside the smoking remains of another.

"What do you mean it's not there?!" a gurglly but serious voice angrily bellows across what can only be a medical bay as it floats within a chamber of healing liquid with only a small glass panel to see out, "This battle nearly costs me my life and you say the omnitrix is no longer on board the transport?"

A humanoid drone standing in front of the small glass panel answers the being, "Sensors indicate a probe was jettisoned from the ship just before boarding. It landed on the planet below."

"Go." The voice in the capsule demands, "Bring it to me if you have to exterminate all life on that miserable planet!"

"Sending retrieval drones." The initial drone answers, watching as a 40 ft tall robot prepares to exit the ship and retrieve their prize.

* * *

 **Yes. I will have Squidface's drones appearing in later chapters as a sort of side-plot. There is gonna be that much of a difference.**

 **Don't expect quick updates. This took me roughly two weeks to write, and that was during the summer when I didn't have a significant amount of schoolwork.**

 **So yeah, thanks for reading to anyone who made it this far. Don't be afraid to review, and constructive criticism is welcome. Have a blessed day. Or night. I dunno when you're reading this.**


	2. Legend of the Gobblewonker

**That took a lot longer than I anticipated! Like I said in the first chapter, it took me two weeks to write when I didn't have school to worry about. Took a little over two months this time since I only have time to write on weekends now and even then I don't have time every weekend. Quick updates are simply not possible for me.**

 **Anywhat, first things first! I forgot to mention in the first chapter that this story is also being posted on Wattpad. Luckily when I posted the first chapter on Wattpad I didn't forget to mention that it's also here.**

 **Insert transition here**

 **Time to respond to ya'll's reviews!**

 **Caliban Super Saiyan 0: Thanks dude. Appreciate that. Just the sheer fact of location will change the Ben 10 plotpoints significantly, so you can imagine how different they'll be when they do come up considering all the new parties that will be involved and old ones that won't.**

 **Dan 10 Man: Oh yeah, Ben and Gwen's presence will significantly alter the methods used to reach outcomes, even if they don't alter the outcomes themselves. I do plan on Bill striking a deal with one of Ben's foes but Vilgax is not the one I have in mind. I understand you wanting to see Ben and Mabel together but as I said before this is primarily practice for writing and any ship involving Mabel would severely disrupt future storylines I'd like to take a shot at. And all that is without going into the fact that I don't ship.**

 **Oh hey, that's the only two reviews I got first chapter. Maybe get some more of ya'll to review this time around? If not that's fine too I just want a bit more** **conductoid** **feedback.**

 **Some of you may have already noticed that the main body of the story is in a larger font size than this little author's blerb up here. That's because of a mistake I made when writing the chapter that I didn't notice until I transferred it from Word into FanFiction. In Word I usually have the fontsize set to 16 instead of 11 on there and didn't realize that would transfer here. My bad.**

 **For some reason they removed the horizontal line button so I'm just gonna do this to separate the author's notes from the rest of the chapter.**

"Are you ready for the ultimate challenge?" Mabel exclaims over the kitchen table, holding a Shakespeare shaped syrup bottle.

"I'm always ready!" Dipper answers, holding up a park ranger shaped syrup bottle.

"Don't forget me!" Ben joins in, holding a generic monster shaped bottle of syrup.

"Then you know what this means!" Mabel smiles competitively.

Both the twins and Ben all yell 'Syrup race!' at the same time as they open their respective bottles and hold them upside down above them, cheering for 'Sir Syrup', 'Mountie Man', and 'Soul Sap-er' respectively.

Mabel, now clad in a lighter purple sweater depicting a heart wearing sunglasses, smacks the bottom of her bottle, much to Dipper and Ben's dismay, allowing her to win with a triumphant "Yes!" before she starts hacking and choking on the syrup. "I won!" she wheezes out between coughs.

Ben simply glares at her while Dipper rolls his eyes and then catches sight of Gwen reading a magazine. He stands up and goes to read over her shoulder. "Ho ho! No way!" Dipper exclaims, noticing a particular add and grabbing the magazine out of Gwen's hands.

"Hey!" Gwen protests, standing up and following Dipper back to the table, "I was reading that!"

"Guys, check this out!" Dipper holding the page with the add open for them to see.

"Human sized hamster balls?" Mabel gasps in excitement at an ad on the other page, "I'm human sized!"

"No no, Mabel," Dipper waves his hand in front of her face to stop her from fantasizing, "this." He points to the article he means, a monster photo contest where you can win a thousand dollars, and last month's winner being what appears to be a well made but obvious suit, "We see weirder stuff than that every day!"

"Sure you do." Gwen pinches the bridge of her nose, "Just like how Norman turned out to be a bunch of gnomes that abducted Mabel."

"He did!" Mabel slams the table with both her arms at the same time.

"Gwen, you saw Ben turn into that Four Arms, and you saw some of Stinkfly's goo in the parking lot." Dipper argues, "Why don't you believe us about the gnomes?"

"It's way too absurd." Gwen scoffs, "I think you three drove him away somehow and don't want to admit it to anyone."

"I have beard hair!" Mabel shouts, holding up a tuft of gnome hair she has from the gnomes.

"That looks like it came from Mr. Pines, not a gnome." Gwen folds her arms and rolls her eyes in disbelief. "Even if it was real, why would you save it?"

Mabel looks down, unable to answer the question.

It's about now that Stan comes in, yawning while wearing only his undershirt and boxers instead of his trademark suit, holding a newspaper. "Good morning knuckleheads." He smiles suspiciously, "You know what day it is?"

"Happy anniversary?" Dipper guesses, shrugging while holding the magazine.

"Monday?" Gwen asks, not seeing what else it could be exactly.

"Mazel Tov!" Mabel shouts the first thing that comes to mind, waving her arms in the air.

Stan slaps Dipper on the back of the head with the paper before dropping it on the table, "Its Family Fun Day, genius." He opens the fridge and smells a carton of milk to see if it's expired, "We're cutting off work and having one of those, ya know, bonding type deals."

"Mr. Pines, is this gonna be anything like our last 'family bonding day'?" Gwen stares at Stan with accusing eyes as they all share a flashback of when Stan was having the children paint hundred dollar bills and him commenting that they made Benjamin Franklin look like a woman before the police arrive.

Mabel shudders uncomfortably, "The county jail was so cold…"

"Alright," Stan raises his hands in defense, "Maybe I haven't been the best summer caretaker." He walks over to behind Ben where he is standing above all the children at once, "But I swear, today we're gonna have some _real_ family fun. Now who wants to put on some blindfolds and get into my car?!"

Gwen leans away from Stan while the other three cry out with joy…until Dipper catches on to the wording and asks, "Wait, what?"

Meanwhile, the 40 ft tall robot from the alien craft crashes into the ground a few miles away from Gravity Falls. Air is released from various places as it silently sends two hovering UFO shaped drones to scout ahead and cover distance much quicker than it can, following after them at a much slower pace. One of the drones begins to home in on a lake near the town where a large energy reading can be detected.

Back in the town, Stan is attempting to get a signal on the radio in his car while he drives down the road at an alarming rate, the Twins and Ben all sitting in the back while Gwen is in shotgun, all four blindfolded. They hit a speed bump without slowing down, prompting conversation. "Blindfolds never lead to anything good…" Dipper states, hugging his knees against his chest in nervous anticipation.

"Cheer up man," Ben elbows Dipper from his seat, much calmer than either of the Twins, "maybe we're going to a Sumo Slammers convention or something." Gwen facepalms in the front seat upon hearing such an absurd idea.

Mabel, having not been paying attention to anything, starts a whole new train of thought for them. "Wow. I feel like all my other senses are heightened." She starts feeling all over Dipper's face, "I can see with my fingers!"

This continues until they hit another speed bump, causing all of passengers to bounce into the air for a second. "Grunkle Stan, are you wearing a blindfold?" Dipper asks, frowning at the possibility.

"Heh." Stan laughs, looking back at Dipper, "Nah, but with these cataracts I might as well be." He looks forward and squints, trying to see something, "What is that? A woodpecker?" The car immediately blows through a barrier on the side of the road and sign on the other side of it, effectively taking an unintended shortcut while all the children scream in surprise!

A twig falls out of the engine of the car as they stand outside it at their destination. "Ok, ok," Stan comes back from where he had gone to do something he wouldn't tell the kids, "Open em up!" They remove their blindfolds to reveal Stan in fishing outfit, wearing a hat full of fishhooks, and carrying several fishing rods under a sign that reads 'Fishing Season: Opening Day'. Behind him is the local lake. "Ta da! It's fishing season!" Stan exclaims excitedly.

"Fishing?" Mabel asks, a concerned and confused look on her face.

"You've gotta be kidding me." Ben grumbles in aggravation, already feeling the boredom creeping in.

"What are you playing at, old man?" Dipper accuses, pointing a finger at his great uncle.

"You're gonna love it!" Stan yells, ignoring their comments and turning to face the lake, "The whole town's out here!"

Down at the lake is the owner of the local Dinner, asking the fish to get in the frying pan she's holding. A photographer takes a picture of a fisherman holding large fish on the pier, who falls into the water after being blinded by the flash. Another family that looks like it might be Wendy's is there as well, the father snapping his son's fishing rod in half, grabbing a fish out of the water, and wrestling with it in the boat while his three sons and a random stranger on another boat cheer him on.

"That's some quality family bonding!" Stan beams at the fun day he has planned for the Twins and the Tennysons.

"Grunkle Stan, why do you wanna bond with us all of sudden?" Dipper asks, folding his arms and complete confusion.

"Why do you even want to bond with me and the doofus at all?" Gwen adds, hands on her hips, "We aren't even related to you."

"C'mon!" Stan encourages, pumping his arm in the air as he walks over to them, "This is gonna be great!" his face drops from enthusiastic to pleading, "I've never had fishing buddies before." He then gets an annoyed look at a memory, "The guys at the lodge won't go with me. They don't 'like or trust me'."

"I think he actually wants to fish with us." Mabel clarifies, turning to her brother.

"Hey! I know what'll cheer you sad sacks up!" Stan takes two hats from behind his back and plops them onto the Twins' heads, "Pow! Pines family fishing hats!" the Twins look at their hats in concern, Dipper's being misspelled 'Dippy' and Mabel's having the E backwards and the L halfway torn off, "That's hand stitching ya know!"

Gwen gives Stan a questioning look, and he misinterprets it as disappointment, "I didn't make any for you two. More of a family thing ya know?"

Stan turns back to address the entire group, "Anyway, it's just gonna be you and me on a boat for ten hours!"

"Ten hours?" Gwen clarifies, disbelief all over her face, "There is no way I'm going out there for ten hours, especially not with this jerk." she shoves her thumb in Ben's direction, "If you need me I'll be on the pier." She walks off to go grab a chair to sunbathe on at the pier.

"Her loss." Stan shrugs, "You guys ready?" he holds up a book from his back pocket, "I brought the joke book!"

"No! **NOOO!** " Dipper shouts in shock and cringe!

"There's gotta be a way out of this!" Ben states, looking at the other two.

"I seen it!" an old man screams at the pier, "I seen it again!" he goes running across the shore, knocking over everything in his path including a citizen's sub sandwich. He grabs onto one of the fishermen, "The Gravity Falls Gobblewonker! Come quick before it scrab-doodles away!" he throws the man aside and starts dancing of all things.

"Awww!" Mabel holds her hands up by her face, "He's doing a happy jig!"

" _Nooooo_!" the old man grabs Mabel by the shoulder, "Its a jig of great _danger!_ "

"Hey! Hey!" a lake ranger comes out of the lake cabin holding a spray bottle, scaring the old man away from the trio, "Now what did I tell you about scaring my customers!" he sprays onto the old man like a bad cat, "This is your last warning, dad!"

"I got proof this time, by gumbiddy!" the old man exclaims, shielding his face from the water. That grabs the attention of Dipper, Ben, and Mabel pretty quick. The old man leads everyone to a smashed boat at the end of the pier and yells, "Behold! It's the gobbldywonker that dun did it!"he starts miming the description as he describes it, the actual Gravity Falls police pulling up to the pier as he does so, "It had a long neck like a ge-raf! And wrinkly skin like, like this gentleman right here!" he points at Stan, he is currently digging earwax out of his ear.

"Huh?" Stan hasn't been paying attention until now.

The old man continues, "It chawed my boat up to smitheroons and shimshammed over to Scuttlebutt Island!" he points over to the island in the middle of the lake, then grabs his son and starts pulling, "Ya gotta believe me!"

"Attention all units!" a somewhat short and round police officer in the boat begins, "We got ourselves a crazy old man." Everyone starts laughing at the old man, except his son who just hangs his head in shame, and Ben and the Pines who just watch in somewhat sympathy and somewhat confusion.

"Aw donkey-spittle!" the old man waves his arms up in defeat and walks away saying something about banjo-polish.

"Well that happened." Stan deadpans, less interested and more weirded out. Then he steps into a homemade looking boat titled the Stan-O-War, "Now let's untie this boat and get out on that lake!"

"Guys," Dipper turns to Mabel and Ben with clear excitement in his eyes, "did you hear what that old guy said?!"

"'Aw donkey-spittle!'" Mabel mimics the old man rather well.

"The thing about the monster? What about it? Are we gonna fight it?" Ben asks, his own interest peeked at the possibility of testing out more new monstrous forms!

"Maybe! But all we need is to snag a photo of it. If we can do that," Dipper takes Gwen's magazine from earlier out of his vest and holds it open to the photo contest page, "we could split the prize three ways! Imagine what you could do with over three hundred dollars!"

Mabel turns around and looks into the sky, imagining herself in one of those human sized hamster balls acting condescending to an actual hamster in a hamster ball and then flirting from within the ball at two unrealistically good looking boys staring at her in awe.

Ben on the other hand imagines becoming a world famous monster hunting super hero, with Gwen as grumpy secretary doing all the paperwork that might come with it!

"Guys?" Dipper snaps his fingers in both their faces, " _Guys._ " This snaps them back to reality.

"I am one million percent on board with this!" Mabel exclaims, staring determinedly at her brother.

"I'm in too! I've been wanting to try out this watch again!" Ben adds, pumping up the arm wearing the watch.

Dipper nods and then goes to tell Stan. "Grunkle Stan! Change of plans! We're taking that boat to Scuttlebutt Island and we're gonna find that gobblewonker."

After explaining the new plan the Twins and Ben chant 'monster hunt' in anticipation! Until the old man from before comes running back to chant with them and then leaves sadly when they stop chanting.

Another boat called the S.S. Cool Dude pulls up to the pier honking at them, driven by none other than Soos. "You dudes say somting about a monster hunt?" he asks, leaning over the side.

"Soos!" Mabel yells in happiness.

"What's up, Hambone?" Soos asks, fist pumping the girl and then both making explosion noises. "Dudes, you can totally use my boat for your hunt! It's got a steering wheel! Chairs! Normal boat stuff." he pats the hull proudly.

"Alright, alright," Stan halts the entire exchange, "Let's think this through." He purposely makes himself sound bored, "You kids could go waste your time on some epic monster finding adventure," he changes his tone to sound more excited, "Or you could spend the day learning how to tie knots and skewer worms with you Great Uncle Stan!"

The kids look between eachother unsure, then they all glance at Soos and see him doing the robot for no apparent reason and smile. Then glance back at Stan to see him bouncing his eyebrows and smelling his sweaty armpit and frown in disgust. Then they look over to Scuttlebutt Island and decide their course of action!

"So whaddya say?" Stan confidently asks, expecting them to go with him and being surprised and disappointed to see Soos leaving the dock with all of the kids in tow.

"We made the right choice!" he hears Mabel yelling as they leave him behind for the sake of adventure.

His face twists into dejected anger as he shouts, "Ingrates!" at them and sitting in his boat alone, "Ah, who need's em." He sits down, "I got a whole box of creepy fishing lures to keep me company." He stares down at the fly swarmed lures and shivers, closing the box.

Back on the S.S. Cool Dude Dipper stands on the bow of the boat dramatically, now clad in a life jacket rather than his usual vest. He turns back and commands, "Hoist the anchor!" which prompts Soos and Ben, also wearing life jackets, to work together to do, then he turns to Mabel, wearing one as well, and continues, "Raise the flag!" which she does by holding up a towel depicting the word 'fun' and a sun with sunglasses.

"We're gonna find that gobblewonker!" Mabel exclaims in anticipation as the boat nears the island.

"We're gonna prove it's real and maybe fight it!" Ben adds on, hoping to learn more about the forms in the watch.

"We're gonna win that photo contest!" Dipper finishes for both of them, holding his camera in the air!

"Do any of you dudes have sunscreen?" Soos asks, it just dawning on him that he doesn't.

They all look at eachother for a bit before Dipper pipes up, "We're gonna…go get sunscreen!" and they turn the boat around with a collective 'yay', unaware of the large shape lurking beneath them.

On the way back to the boat from getting sunscreen, they spot Gwen sitting on a bench near the lake, seemingly relaxing and soaking up the sun. Unfortunately for her, Ben is the only one to notice. His face twists into a devilish smile as he sees a fisherman carrying a bucket of live worms heading past them. He quietly snatches one out of the bucket and snickers as he drops it in Gwen's hair while they pass behind her, causing her to scream and freak out!

"Gwen?" Mabel turns around upon hearing the shriek of her friend.

Dipper and Soos turn around pretty quick, the former looking as though he thought she was getting kidnapped by gnomes.

Ben snorts and bends over from laughing so hard. It's about this time that Gwen finally pulls the worm out of her hair, revealing Ben's prank to everyone. She sends him a glare, "Not funny, Ben!" She throws the worm onto the ground and stomps on it.

"You're right, it's not funny." Ben hangs his head, seemingly in remorse. Then his smile grows even wider, "It's hilarious!"

"Oh man, I thought a monster was attacking." Dipper heaves, "I was ready to take a photo and run."

"Photo?" Gwen questions, still glaring at her cousin, "For what?"

"Monster photo contest!" Mabel exclaims, jumping up and raising her arms with her voice, "Wanna come?"

"Do what? Watch you take pictures of Ben? No thanks." Gwen denies, rolling her eyes.

"We can't take pictures of Ben and risk the government coming after us." Dipper argues, "Besides, the gobblewonker will be a much better monster!"

"You can come if ya want, dawg, we'd just need to get you some sunscreen." Soos offers, pointing toward his boat behind them.

"As in that kraken monster that crazy old man was talking about?" Gwen scoffs, "I'm gonna say no to the wild goose chase. Just take the dweep and go waste your time away from me."

"Booo!" Mabel shouts, holding two thumbs down.

"You're loss man." Dipper shrugs, walking away.

Ben wipes a tear from his eye before the group leaves Gwen behind on the shoreline.

After boating back to middle of the lake, Dipper calls everyone to the deck where he begins briefing them. Pacing back and forth, he explains, "Alright. If we wanna win this contest we gotta do it right." He turns and halts his pacing, "Think: What's the number one problem with most monster hunts?"

"If you're a side character you die in the first five minutes of the movie." Soos answers, before thinking for a moment and jolting, "Dude! Am I a side character?! Do ya ever think about stuff like that?" Mabel gives Soos a worried look while Ben just laughs a bit under his breath.

"No no no, camera trouble!" Dipper corrects, "Say Bigfoot shows up." He points Soos, "Soos, be Bigfoot." Soos turns around in a sort of still frame of walking while he turns his head back with a primitive look on his face. Dipper acts out the next bit to emphasize the point, "There he is! Bigfoot!" he starts feeling around his pockets, "Uh oh! No camera!" then he pulls one out of the jacket, "Oh wait! Here's one!" he mock tries to take a picture, "Aw! No film!" he stops acting and puts the camera back into the life jacket, "You see? You see what I'm doing here?"

"Yeah." Mabel nods.

"Makes sense." Ben agrees, folding his arms.

"Dude's got a point." Soos holds his arm in acknowledgement.

"That's why I bought **Twenty-one** disposable cameras!" Dipper shouts, pointing directly up! He starts revealing them as he lists them, "Two on my ankle, three on my jacket, four for each of you, three extras in this bag, and one under my hat." He calms down as he finishes, "There's no way we're gonna miss this."

His confidence still brimming, he adds, "Ok everybody, lets test our cameras out."

Soos holds his camera right up to his face and takes a picture, the flash blinding him for a moment, causing him to throw his first camera into the lake from the recoil, "Aw dude!" he cries out.

"Ya see?" Dipper doesn't sweat it, "This is exactly why you need backup cameras. We still have twenty!"

Just then a seagull swoops down a bit too close to Mabel, scaring her into throwing her first camera at it! "Ah! Bird!" she yells in surprise.

"Nineteen!" Dipper corrects himself, throwing his arms up in a slight impatience, "Ok guys, I repeat, don't lose your cameras."

"Wait, lose the cameras?" Soos asks, a panicked look on his face.

" _Don't_!" Dipper yells, angrily standing straight with his arms up.

"Dude I just threw two away." Soos states, pointing to the second and third cameras Soos lost.

"Seventeen!" Dipper roars, throwing up his arms in frustration "We have seventeen cameras–" they hear a breaking noise and see Ben sitting on the broken remains of his first camera, playing his handheld, then looking back up them apologetically. "Sixteen! Alright! We have sixteen camera—!" He slams his fist down, destroying his first camera, "Fifteen. We have fifteen cameras."

"So what's the plan?" Mabel inquires, "Throw more cameras overboard or what?" she holds her second camera over the side of the boat.

" _No_!" Dipper screams in horror at seeing his chances constantly dwindling, "No. Ok."

He collects himself before explaining the actual plan, "You and Ben will be lookouts, Soos can work the steering wheel, and I'll be captain."

"What?!" Mabel voices her disapproval, "Why do you get to be captain? What about Mabel, huh?"

"Or Ben maybe?" the ten year old chimes in, putting his handheld in his pocket, "Why can't I be captain."

"Ben, you're ten years old." Dipper deadpans, "And frankly I'd trust Gwen to be captain more than either of you." He looks between them both.

"What about co-captain?" Mabel inquires, a big braces-filled grin on her face.

"There's no such thing as co-captain." Dipper states, his face going blank.

Mabel throws her second camera off the side of the boat. "Aw, whoops."

"Ok fine!" Dipper yells in dismay, "You can be co-captain!"

"That make me co-captain too?" Ben asks, looking between them.

"If it'll keep you from throwing away your cameras, than sure." One could almost see the fumes coming from Dipper's attitude at this point.

"Can I be associate co-captain?" Soos asks, raising his hand as if in class.

"As co-captain I authorize that request!" Mabel pipes up, holding her finger up.

"Well as first co-captain," Dipper draws attention back to his plan, "Our first order of business is to lure the monster out with this:" he motions to a barrel of fish food next to Soos.

"Permission to taste some?" Soos sheepishly requests.

The child all look at him funnily before shrugging. "Granted." Dipper states.

"Permission co-granted." Mabel adds.

"Permission co-co-granted." Ben continues for them.

Soos raises his own hand, "Permission associate co-granted." Then reaches in and grabs a hunk of the food from the barrel and licks it. Then he suddenly starts coughing and grabbing his tongue trying to get the taste out of his mouth, as the children laugh at him. "Dude, I dunno what I expected that to taste like."

"Oh Soos." The kids slap their knees from laughter.

"Traitors." Stan scowls, watching them from across the lake, "I'll find my own fishing buddies." He looks around trying to find candidates when he spots a couple only a few yards away. "Ah!" Stan says in excitement as he starts the motor on his boat, "There's my new pals!" he boats over as fast as he can.

Meanwhile, the man in the boat is hunched over, looking at a wedding ring while the woman in there with him is distracted. He takes a breath and begins speaking, "Now that we're alone, Rosanna…" 'Rosanna' turns to him in curious wonder, "…There's a burning question that my heart longs to ask of you."

"Oh Reginald!" Rosanna clasps her hands together a stereotypical lovebird fashion.

"Hey!" Stan pulls up next to them just in time to interrupt them. Rosanna leans into the 'Reginald' in weariness of the stranger. "Wanna hear a joke?" Stan asks, his enthusiasm unsettling the couple. Reginald was about to say 'no' when Stan continues anyway, "Here it goes: My ex-wife still misses me…but her aim is getting better!" he swings his arms around foolishly to get a laugh, though the couple is downright scared and offended by joke. After a few seconds of silence Stan repeats himself, "Her aim is getting better!"

The couple look to eachother in a silent agreement that Stan is a terrible person.

Stan decides to explain himself, "Ya see? It's funny because marriage is terrible."

Rosanna folds her arms and looks skyward with her eyes screwed shut in disgust while Reginald rows them away. "What?!" Stan fails to understand his own misconduct.

Meanwhile, the S.S. Cool Dude is slowly approaching Scuttlebutt Island, Soos shoveling out fish food without really paying attention to where he's going. Dipper and Mabel are watching the front of the boat for any sign of the creature while Ben keeps an eye on the back.

Mabel grabs the lower beak of a pelican that landed next to her on the rail. "Hey! How's it going?" she asks it. She moves the bird's beak with her arm to simulate it talking while giving it her own voice, "It's going awesome! Bow bout ba bout bow!"

This grabs Dipper's attention, and he takes it to see that she's neglecting her assigned job. "Mabel, leave that thing alone."

Mabel answers from the pelican, "Awww, I don't mind none!" she then takes up her glass of water and announces, "Hey look, I'm drinking water!" and attempting to sing twinkle twinkle little star in her pelican voice while guzzling it, at least until she starts choking on it, scaring away the fowl.

"Aren't you supposed to be on lookout?" Dipper insists, hands on his waist.

Mabel answers throwing a volleyball she got from somewhere at him. "Look out!" He doesn't catch it and it bounces off his shoulder while he flinches from the unexpected assault.

Mabel chuckles a bit, relaxing on the boat's rail, then telling her brother, "Seriously, I'm on it."

Not even a full second later the boat runs aground, causing everyone but Soos to fall over. "What's happening over there?" Ben calls, standing back up and peering around the side of the cabin.

"We arrived!" Mabel exclaims, climbing back up the guardrail. "I'm a lookout genius." She smugly states, despite the S.S. Cool Dude now being beached. "Hamster balls, here we come!"

The squad climbs out of the boat and travel toward the woods of the island. Dipper leads, holding a lantern to light the strangely foggy woods. Soos stops next to a sign nailed to a tree as he gets an idea, Mabel and Ben stopping right behind him. "Dudes, check it out!" he invites, holding his arm over the 'scuttle' half, "Butt Island!"

"Soos, you rapscallion!" Mabel waves her arm humorously at the joke, said joke also earning a smile from the Tennyson.

Dipper just stares, shocked that they're all joking around during a hunt for a dangerous monster. "Hey!" Mabel waves at her brother, "Why aren't you laughing?" she gets a sly look in her eye, "Are you scaaaaared?"

"Haha, right. I'm not—" Dipper was responding when Mabel boops his nose with a fart noise.

"Yeah you are!" Mabel playfully argues, booping his nose several more times despite his protests, causing him to drop the lantern.

"You got nothing to worry about man." Ben puffs out his chest and stands in a heroic pose, "Not when me, Four Arms, Stinkfly, and whatever else this thing has in it are here!"

The teasing ceases when the group hears a strange mechanical hovering noise nearby. "Dude, did you guys hear that?" Soos asks.

"What was that?" Mabel adds, standing a bit closer to Soos than before.

"Doesn't sound like a gobblewonker whatever it is." Ben answers as best he can, laying one hand on the Watch just in case.

Just then, a possum comes out of nowhere and steals their lantern. "Man, I can't see anything!" Dipper complains, trying to see further by shielding his eyes from the sun.

"Dude, I dunno man." Soos interjects, shrugging, "Maybe this…maybe this isn't worth it."

"Not worth it?" Dipper questions, looking more surprised than concerned, "Guys, imagine what would happen if we got that picture!" In his head Dipper imagines a scene where he and Ben are being interviewed by a talk show host about the gobblewonker hunt, and receiving gold medals for their achievement while at a photoshoot. That's when Mabel in her human sized hamster ball smashes through the wall of the studio and demands to get interviewed despite her unkept appearance, and rolling through the scene like a wrecking ball! "I don't know about you guys but I'm in!" Dipper exclaims.

"Me too!" Mabel throws her arms into the air with excitement.

"Make that three!" Ben adds, holding up his left arm dramatically.

The three children run in the direction they heard the noise emanate from, followed shortly by a not so enthusiastic Soos that's yelling, "Alright dudes, I'm coming!"

Later, as the group travels through the oddly not so dense island woods, one could hear the sound of Soos beatboxing and Mabel rapping. "My name is Mabel! It rhymes with table!" she sings, entertaining herself and Soos, "It also rhymes with glabel! It also rhymes with schmabel!"

"Dude, we should be writing this down!" Soos exclaims, thinking they might have a legitimately good song on their hands.

"Wait, guys, listen." Ben puts a stop to them, looking through the fog as he hears the same mechanical sound from before.

"Over there!" Dipper points over to a dim red glow in the mist, "If we get a picture of whatever that is it might be better than the gobblewonker!" Dipper races toward the light eagerly, Ben and the others trailing behind, Soos grabbing a sharp looking branch on the ground as a weapon just in case.

That's when they discover the source of the noise; a UFO shaped drone of some kind, one with an alien design. "What the what is that?" Mabel asks, scratching her head.

"It's not a monster." Soos plants his branch in the ground, resting his hand on top of it, "Maybe it belongs to the government or something."

The 'head' of the drone rotates a bit and it catches sight of the group. It scans them until it notices the Watch on Ben's wrist. It wastes no time rotating until the two claw-like appendages are facing toward the wearer of what it seeks. "I think it saw us." Dipper cautions the group, backing a little away from the robot. The robot blasts two lasers at Ben, seemingly unprovoked! It does miss fortunately, but only by a hair! The others scatter behind the brush in the area.

"Government or not I'm taking this thing down!" Ben shouts, slamming his hand onto the watch without looking at the dial, just hoping for the right transformation for the job to happen as it had before! His muscles bulge abnormally around the watch once again as the green light consumes him, his eye turning into a bright orange color without a pupil as the muscles reach that area of his body. Orange fur grows from his skin like a crop in a well-tilled field, even covering the eyes and making them useless. His mouth and jaw widen as his teeth grow larger and sharper while his nails extend into claws! He can't help but roar in ferocity as the transformation is complete and the light fades!

Now in a large orange body that seems like a cross between a dog, a bear, and an ape, Ben growls at the assaulting drone. Said drone hovers over Ben, a red glow in the pincer of its claws growing.

"Now's my chance!" Dipper whispers to himself, taking out one of his cameras. He aims carefully to get a shot of the fight, Ben currently trying to rip the drone's appendage off with his bare teeth while hanging onto the top of it. The bright flash of a picture being taken grabs the robot's attention and it aims its second appendage toward Dipper, whose face is now pale. "Oh no…"

"Take this!" Soos exclaims, throwing his spear like branch to Ben, who manages to catch it and jam it into the machine.

"We need to get out of here!" Mabel shouts, leading the charge away from the fight back in the general direction of the boat. Dipper and Soos follow, both so pumped full of adrenaline they could run for hours.

When Ben hit the drone with the branch, it ended up shooting the blast it had charged at him instead of the children, knocking the kid turned beast off. Its censors shorting out, it peruses the others, forcing Ben to chase it!

Ben hops from tree to tree, unable to see but able to orient himself through smell and hearing enough that he could easily be mistaken for an ape-man.

Soos throws away his last camera and Mabel throws away her third camera as they try to stall it, neither accomplishing anything other than lowering their collective camera total further.

Ben manages to leap from the branch of one of the trees onto the drones head once again, this time ripping the branch from before out of the drone and stabbing it back in even harder, which causes a chain reaction the makes the branch catch on fire! The machine starts to move erratically with the burning of the branch interfering with its systems, and it eventually crashes into the lake, Ben jumping off just in time to faceplant on the shore! An explosion erupts from the remains soon after.

"Whoa dude," Soos announces the presence of himself and the Twins as they come out of the woods, "that was intense."

"I wonder what it was doing here." Dipper places his hand on his chin.

Ben finally manages to pull his head out of the sand and shake it around, swinging quartz particles everywhere. "You ok, Ben?" Mabel asks, looking at him funny. Ben answers with a snort, unable to talk in his current form.

"That thing you turned into sure is one wild mutt isn't it." Soos laughs, deciding to pet Ben a little as if he were in fact a dog. Ben responds by small roar that would probably come off as a bark if he were smaller, smiling from the massage like feeling of being pet.

Dipper sits on a rock nearby, looking through the camera film to see if he got any shots of the drone without Ben, only to find his one and only shot featured Ben tearing the thing apart. "Aw man…All that for nothing." He rubs his forehead in dismay.

Back on the lake, Stan is sharing some of his fishing knowledge with his replacement fishing 'buddy', "Look, when you're threading the line, lot of people don't know this, but you wanna use a barrel knot. That's a secret from one fishing buddy to another." Stan beams as he winks down at the chubby child in the boat he pulled up next to.

The child stumbles over his words in nervous confusion before he finally manages to ask, "Who are you exactly?"

"Just call me your Grunkle Stan!" the old man pats the boy on the head as if it were his own kid.

"Sir! Sir! Why are you talking to our son?!" the child's mother demands, her and her husband glaring at Stan as if he were the Devil himself, "If you don't leave right now I'm calling the police!"

Stan tries to defuse the situation, "Haha, ya see the thing about that is—" he pulls the cord on his boat's motor before he finishes, sending him flying away from them!

Back on the island around an hour later, long after Ben had transformed back but not quite long enough for the Watch to have recharged, Ben can be seen discussing name ideas with Soos and Mabel. Dipper on the other hand is still sulking about his failure to get a usable picture. "What're we gonna tell Grunkle Stan?" he thinks aloud, catching the others' attention. He picks up a rock and throws it into the lake, "We ditched him over nothing."

"I'm sure he'll understand." Ben comforts, placing a hand on Dipper's shoulder, "He's your family."

"Yeah," Mabel smiles, pumping her arm into the air, "It'll be alright!"

"Hold on." Dipper gets a puzzled look as he notices a minor vibrating underneath him, "Do you guys feel that?" That's when the rock Dipper was sitting on submerges all of a sudden, as if resting on something's back until the something moved, "Hey hey whoa!" he calls out in surprise as he swims gets back onto shore.

The group watches as a giant aquatic reptile creature moves through the water, only the back showing above the surface. Dipper's face lights up in glee as he pulls out one of his cameras, "This is it!" he whispers, beginning to take photos of the beast. "C'mon, this is our chance!" Dipper urges the others, only to find them backing away. "What's wrong with you guys?"

The monster had swam up behind Dipper while his back was turned, and its head was rising out of the water behind him as he asked why the others weren't taking pictures.

"Dipper…" Ben and Mabel try to warn at roughly the same time. Soos tries to warn the detective as well, but says 'Dude' instead.

"It's not that hard, alright?" the boy deadpan, "All you gotta do is point and shoot. Like this!" He turns back around to demonstrate, finding the Gobblewonker right at the shore next to them. The beast unleashes a roar of fury at the group, causing Soos to lead Mabel and Ben away while screaming for Dipper to run. Dipper was caught in shock and dropped his currant camera before going to run alongside the others, followed shortly by the lake's leviathan, who knocks down a few trees in the pursuit, a few coming close to hitting the group!

"Get back to boat!" Soos demands, "Hurry!"

The monster almost gets close enough to chomp Mabel, but she jumps onto Soos's back just in time and they speed ahead of Ben and Dipper, the latter of which is trying to take a second picture. But before he can take the picture, Ben slaps the camera out of his hand, "Not the time man!" the ten year old scolds.

Ben grabs Dipper by the arm to force them to speed up to catch up with Soos and Mabel without risking their lives over a photo.

They just barely manage to make to the boat and push it back into the water, Soos suggesting, "Let's get outta here dudes!" as he puts the boat into high reverse gear.

"Alright…" Dipper sighs in exhaustion and relief that the boat is probably much faster than the Gobblewonker, "This is it!" He digs another camera out of his life jacket and tries to take more photos, only to discover something horrifying. "Cracked lens?!" he exclaims in dismay, "Someone get a photo!"

That's when he notices that Soos is throwing both Ben's cameras and the spare cameras at the monster in a vain attempt to slow it down, Ben trying to get the Watch to work faster the entire time. "What are you doing?!" Dipper screams.

Soos catches on to the boy's meaning just after he threw away the second to last one, leaving a currant total of five cameras left among them. "Oh! I still got one left! Don't worry dude!" Soos tosses the camera to Dipper, but misses and smashes it on the cabin of the boat.

The monster enters the water just about now and begins creating water turbulence from swimming, forcing Soos to turn the boat around and put into full speed forward, Dipper urging him to go faster the entire time.

Stan meanwhile is making grumpy Grunkle noises while tying some bait to his line. He freezes up when he hears a sickeningly youthful voice in a nearby boat. "Can you pwease tell me more funny stories, Papa?" it asks. Stan looks up to see another elderly man with his two grandchildren, neither of whom could possibly be a day over five.

"Anything for my fishing buddies!" 'Papa' laughs, ruffling up the hat and hair of the boy while laughing, unintentionally infuriating Stan in the process.

"Papa?" the boy begins, a shy but heartfelt expression crossing his face, "I just reawized that…" his voice drops to a whisper, making him sound almost corny, "I wove you."

That sent Stan over the edge. "Aw come on!" he angrily shouts, "Boooo! Boooooooo!"

"Hey now!" Papa stands up, hands on his hips, "What's the big idea?"

"Maybe he has no one who woves him, Papa." The boy suggests, a sad expression making itself known on his face at the thought.

"Yeah? Well I–" Stan tries to start an argument, but gets cut off by the S.S. Cool Dude and the Gobblewonker's chase through the lake, drenching both parties. Stan throws his fishing hat into the boat in frustration, then sits down and sighs in loneliness.

Soos tries to dupe the monster by driving around Scuttlebutt Island and through part of an inlet. "Beavers!" Ben calls out, noticing a beaver dam shaped oddly like the Gobblewonker right in their path. Soos tries to turn out of the way but the momentum they already had was too great for them to stop, and they crashed into the structure, beavers raining down all over the boat and chewing on whatever they landed on! One of them latches onto Soos face, causing him to panic and run around the deck instead of drive the boat while its claws rip apart the collar of his shirt! Mabel takes over but isn't able to steer as well as the 'adult'.

Dipper pulls beavers off the boat's rails and tosses them at the beast, then turns to Ben and shouts, "Why aren't you helping?!"

"I'm trying! The Watch usually charges back up around now but it's still dead!" Ben retaliates, holding up his left wrist as proof.

"Well _do_ **_something_** until it recharges or it might not matter if it ever does!" Dipper argues, pulling another beaver off the rail and throwing it at the raging reptile behind them.

Meanwhile, Mabel is maneuvering around all the different boats in the area, trying not the hit any, but the monster overturns all of them anyway.

The fishermen that looks like it might be Wendy's father is still wrestling with fish as the chase passes by them, knocking them into the water and undoing his headlock. The fish from within the lake begin to rain back down, several landing in the area of that specific group. "The fishes…" the father's eyes widen in fear, "They seek revenge!" he begins to head toward shore with his sons, "Swim boys! Swim!"

The Gobblewonker finally catches up to the S.S. Cool Dude as it starts to run out of gas, knocking the cabin completely off it with a headbutt version of a left hook.

"Look out!" Mabel calls as they approaching a couple of men in boats, carrying a large glass pane across the lake…for some reason. The remains of their boat crash right through the pane.

The monster finally catches back up to them as they near a waterfall on the edge of a craggy cliff, and it bites the boat in half, completely destroying it and sending the group plunging into the water. On the bright side, it also dislodged the beaver from Soos's face.

Giant yellow eyes and a gaping maw big enough to swallow a bear whole approach the group, but the Watch turns green just in time for Ben to hit it and be encased in green!

Dirty white scales coat his arm, encasing the Watch more rapidly than normal, and his hand is put under incredible strain as his fingers turn into short, yellow, sharp claws while green webbing spreads between his fingers. An antenna like appendage grows out his forehead, becoming a lure not unlike those used by deep sea fish, and his neck splits open into gills! His teeth enlarge as he closes his eyes, to the point where his mouth can't completely contain them anymore, causing them to burst forth around his lips! He finally opens his eyes, revealing purple eyeballs without obvious pupils, and he opens his maw to let out a monstrous roar as the light fades.

Ben breathes in deeply, as if gasping for air, then pauses as he realizes he can breathe under water in this fishy form. "Sometimes I love this watch." He smiles to himself while hearing his new, raspy voice that sounds like he has a sore throat.

He facepalms as he remembers what's happening, "The others!" The black loin-cloth-like flap between his legs grows and merges his legs into a fishtail, giving a mermandic appearance, and this grants him the speed to grab Soos and Dipper just before the Gobblewonker is able to snap its jaw down on them! The 'human' torpedo surges forward with the two and he manages to nab Mabel in his mouth.

He swims literal circles around the Gobblewonker while looking around for somewhere safe to drop off the Pines and Soos, leaping into the air on occasion so they can breathe. "Behind the waterfall!" Dipper shouts during one of said leaps. Ben doesn't ask questions, moving as fast as he can without harming the humans toward the waterfall from under water, then leaping out of the water and through the falls into an underground cave! They land in a pool of lake water still at the mouth of the cave.

"Dudes…" Soos wheezes, catching his breath from the excitement, "…That was awesome."

"Yeah it was!" Mabel shouts, pumping her arm in the air with a huge smile!

"Let's get to shore before it realizes we're in here." Dipper suggests, looking down solemnly.

That's when the water begins to get a little rough. "I think we're too late!" Ben calls out as the Gobblewonker charges into the cave's entrance, splashing the entire gang onto the shore nearby! Luckily the beast is far too large to actually get into the cave and is left stuck squirming in the entrance, trying and failing miserably to eat the children. It lets out a roar of frustration.

"It's stuck!" Mabel smiles, pushing herself off the cave floor to stand.

"Haha!" Ben laughs, pumping is right arm in triumph, "Yes!"

"Wait…" Dipper chokes a bit while he gets up onto his knee, "It's stuck?!" Without missing a beat the boy runs up to a cropping in the upper end of the cave where he can get the best shot. He reaches into his life jacket for a camera, only to find all his camera holders empty. He almost panics as he frantically looks for a camera, hoping they didn't all get lost while they were underwater, but Mabel lifts up his hat, revealing the last of their cameras with a 'boop'.

Dipper laughs in celebration as he snaps picture after picture of the beast below them, Mabel, Soos, and Ben all laughing along with him, Ben having folded his arms. The Gobblewonker tries to take a bite out of them but they remain just out of its reach. "Did you get a good one?" Mabel inquires.

"They're _all_ good ones!" Dipper answers, raising his arms up high! The twins hug in celebration of their victory.

Until that is, a bit of debris falling from the roof of the cave due to the monster's struggles hits it directly in the head! The monster begins to lower itself down with a suspiciously mechanical noise emanating from it as it goes entirely limp. "What?" Ben scratches his head confusion.

Dipper climbs down the face of the ledge they stood atop and onto the Gobblewonker's flipper. He gives it a look and puts his hand against it, pulling it away with a start at the feeling of metal.

"What's wrong?" Mabel calls down just as Dipper raps the hide of the 'monster' a couple times, only to discover it making a metallic noise.

He starts climbing up the scales that aren't completely smooth against the thing. "Careful dude!" Soos warns.

"You don't wanna take a fall from that height!" Ben adds.

"I've got this," Dipper responds, "hold on." He climbs over the edge of the entity and discovers something. He climbs back into view and calls out to the others, "Hey guys! Come check this out!"

The trio of others follow Dipper's path up the 'creature' and discover a hatch of some sort. They glance at one another before Dipper and Ben each take a side opening the hatch, causing steam to flood their immediate area.

Inside the hatch is the old man who they first heard about the Gobblewonker from at the pier! "Eh?" he notices them after a few seconds of trying to operate some controls, "Awww banjo-polish."

"You?!" Dipper exclaims, "You made this?! Why?!"

"Well I…I uh…" he tries to find the right words to explain himself, "I just wanted attention." He looks away in sad expression.

"I still don't understand." Dipper emphasizes.

"Welp!" the elderly man perks up a surprising amount and begins to act out his explanation with exaggerated movements, "First I just hoot-nannied up a biomechanical brainwave generator, and then I learned to operate a stickshift with my beard!" he points down to where his beard is tied to a stickshift.

"Ok, yeah, but _why_ did you do it?" Mabel tries to get him back on track.

"Well, when you get to be an old fella like me nobody pays any attention to you anymore." He takes off his hat and scratches his bald head, "My own son hasn't visited me in months. So I figured maybe I'd catch his fancy with a fifteen ton aquatic robit!" he begins to laugh in a less than sane way. When he calms back down he adds, "In retrospect it seems a bit contrived. You just don't know the lengths us old-timers go to for a little quality time with our families." This prompts a train of thought for both of the twins, them taking out their hand-stitched fishing hats and thinking of Stan.

"So what's your robot for?" the man suddenly interrupts.

"Our robot?" Soos asks with a raised eyebrow.

"Yeah! That robot!" he points to Ben, who is still in his fish monster form, "What's he fer?"

"I'm not a robot." Ben folds his arms, "I'm…uh…I'm…" he realizes he hasn't really got a good answer.

"He's the Real Gobblewonker!" Mabel pipes up, pointing to Ben with a weird sort of impulsive look.

"Uh…yeah!" Ben goes along with it.

"Really? Yer a lot smaller then the legends said." the as of yet unnamed man scratches his head.

"I don't want you building any more robots to impersonate me!" Ben gives a fake angry look to the old-timer, "No more suits and no more drones."

"Drones?" the man looks surprised, "I don't have any drones. Never made anything I couldn't pilot myself."

"That wasn't your drone?" Dipper asks, surprise hitting him like a brick, "The one on Scuttlebutt Island that attacked us before you did wasn't yours?!"

"No sir!" the elder answers, "I made lots of robits in my day!" He starts a very conveniently placed projector, "Like when my wife left me and I created a homicidal pterodactyltron. Or when my pal Ernie didn't come to my retirement party and I created an eighty ton **_ShameBot_** that exploded the entire down town area!" he takes a moment to laugh at his memories, then recollects himself, "I ain't never made a drone of any kind though."

Everyone gives eachother worried looks for a minute.

"Anyway! Time to get back to work on my death-ray!" he goes back down into the hatch and tools can be heard in use. He reaches up to them and asks, "Any a you kids got a screwdriver?"

"Well…" Dipper begins, taking out the last camera, "So much for the photo contest."

"We still have one roll of film left." Mabel states.

"What should we do with it?" Ben asks.

Later, when the day is almost over, Grunkle Stan is steering his way back to shore, sighing in his loneliness. "Hey! Wait up!" Ben, now human again, calls out to him from where he, the Twins, and Soos, who isn't wearing his shirt anymore, are swimming toward him, Mabel riding on Soos's shoulders.

Stan stops his boat to wait for them to catch up. "Kids? What happened to your boat?"

"We spent all day trying to find a legendary dinosaur." Dipper answers, scratching the back of his head.

"And it sorta broke the boat when we actually found it." Ben adds, pointing skyward to draw attention.

"But we realized the only dinosaur we wanna hang out with is right here." Mabel picks up where her brother left off while gesturing toward Stan.

Stan rolls his eyes at the sappiness. "Save your sympathy! I've been having a great time without cha!" he starts listing off his activities of the day on his fingers, "Making friends, talking to my reflection, I had a run in with the lake police." He lifts his leg to show off an alarm with a blinking red light clamped around his leg, "Guess I gotta wear this ankle bracelet now so that'll fun."

"So I guess there isn't room in that boat for four more?" Dipper inquires.

Stan gives the Twins specifically a skeptical look. They respond by putting on their now soaked hand-stitched fishing hats. Stan's expression softens as a result. "You knuckle heads ever see me thread a hook with my eyes closed?" he asks.

"Five bucks says you can't do it!" Ben challenges, a confident look across his face.

"You're on!" Stan agrees, proceeding to help Dipper into the boat while Soos puts Mabel in.

"Five more bucks says you can't do it with your eyes closed plus me singing at the top of my lungs!"

"I like those odds!" Stan smiles, putting his hands on his hips.

Soos helps Ben into the boat and then climbs in himself, nearly turning the boat over. That's when Stan notices his shirtlessness. "Whoa. What happened to your shirt?"

"Long story dude." Soos waves it off.

"Alright, everybody get together." Dipper orders, holding out the last of their disposable cameras to signify why, "Say 'fishing'!"

Ben, Mabel, and Stan all do just that, Mabel waving, Ben folding his arms and smiling, and Stan leaning down enough to actually be in view. Soos steps next to them asking, "Dude, am I in the frame?"

That is the first of several pictures the group takes for the remainder of the day, others including the bet mentioned before, Stan telling jokes from the joke book, Dipper and Ben catching some fish, Stan in a Napoleon pose at the head of the boat, the group stealing fish from other families on the lake, and being chased by the lake police.

Later, on the way back to shore to pick up Gwen and go home, they feel their boat hit something. "What was that?" Dipper asks. Ben shrugs and Mabel makes an 'I don't know' noise.

Little do they know of the large aquatic reptile lurking just beneath them.

The group meets back up with Gwen once they reach the shore. "So, how was your fishing? Or was it to hard for you to understand?" Gwen addresses the group, specifically Ben, getting up from a chair she had been sitting in on the pier.

"It was easy enough. But you'll never know since you didn't even try it!" Ben retorts. The two buttheads, almost literally, while they approach eachother.

"Pack up!" Stan orders from the parking lot gate, "We're heading back to the Shack now!"

"Finally!" Gwen exclaims, ready to get back to something more to her standards, even if only marginally.

"See you later dudes." Soos waves as he heads to the gate as well.

"Why was he with you?" Gwen asks, "And why isn't he wearing a shirt?"

"Long story." Dipper shrugs.

In the car on the way back, Mabel goes on and on about their day chasing the Gobblewonker down, telling Gwen all the major things that happened, only to be met with skepticism. "It'd be farfetched enough for you to tell me that thing is real, but that it was a robot built by a crazy old man is way too ridicules to be real." Gwen shakes her head at the absurdity of it all, "And don't even get me started on some random other robot that isn't the old man's."

"Kids and their imaginations. Am I right?" Stan asks, looking into the back seat at the two girls and Ben – Dipper is riding in the front – and forgetting to look where he's driving.

Dipper just pats the spot in his vest where he's keeping the Journal, a knowing smile on his face.

 **I know some of you may be disappointed that I somewhat wrote Gwen out of the chapter. In my defense, it made everything easier to write and since she did the exact same thing in very similar circumstances in 'The Krakken' I felt it would be fine.**

 **Worry not, she will be included in the weird stuff later. Maybe next chapter. No need for you to worry about that.**

 **As for why I refer to Ben's aliens as monsters? Because none of the kids know that what Ben is turning into is aliens yet. And they won't know until they come across a character from Gravity Falls who would know.**

 **Anywhat, I'll see ya'll again whenever I can actually get the next chapter finished. Could be two weeks like the first one, probably more like two months or so like this one was. I apologize for the slowness. And don't be afraid to criticize my writing. The entire point of writing this is to improve how I write. Suggest better ways to work characters around certain situations, how I word things, etc.**

 **See ya whenever I manage to get back.**


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